


We, Us, Ourselves

by motleystitches (furius)



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Civil War, Alternate Universe - Crack, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Bears, Domestic, Drabble Collection, Genderswap, M/M, Mpreg, Succubi & Incubi, Teddy Bears, Transformation, Tumblr, demon hunting, plant mating, silk road, xmentales chat inspired
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-07
Updated: 2013-07-04
Packaged: 2017-11-20 13:52:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 34
Words: 22,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/586069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/furius/pseuds/motleystitches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of my tumblr ficlets and drabbles. Including, but not exclusive to: crackfics, angst vignettes, short crossovers, pun fics, mpreg theories, short AUs. The stories of Charles/Erik through time and transformations.</p><p>Update: Chapter 33 (NSFW: Agent/Agent), 34 (The Suitor)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tuesday Ficlets

**Author's Note:**

> There were accompanying gifsets to many of the stories.

[The Men Who Were Tuesday: A Nightmare](http://motleypatches.tumblr.com/post/16417041377/the-men-who-were-tuesday-a-nightmare-the-suburbs)

The suburbs of what came to be called the Estates had been built of promise and progress, the American dream realised through generations of innovation and industry. But over the years, the sky-line had became fantastic array of shadow and smog and the landscaped grounds had grown wild. History generally agree the cause had been the clash of two idealists, with temperaments that the more literary wanted to call “artistic,” and the realists called “mad” and the worst called “mutant”.

Regardless, there was an unattractive unreality to the place and came nightfall, and even the most scientific and literal minded had to admit that there must be some truth to the ghost stories- of Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr, who were always trying to find each other. It became a tradition for parents to warn their children away from the Estates on Tuesdays where the winds were said to whisper: “Come back, I’m waiting for you.”

-=-=

[Sleep becomes like death over the years](http://motleypatches.tumblr.com/post/19235585535/sleep-becomes-like-death-over-the-years-at-first#notes)

At first, it began like all of Erik’s dreams- in darkness. And like all the dreams Erik had grown used to and nearly forgotten since they parted, the darkness disappeared with Charles’ appearance. Understandably angry, but solid, skin and muscle warm and alive and walking and with him. Erik was used to pain.

The nightmare began with the sound of pencil on paper while blood trickled down his neck and a lucid memory that Charles had always used a pen, the metal nib an intimate reminder of companionship and trust. Consequently, it couldn’t be Charles who held Erik immobile, who wrote and tested while Erik gave all he was, all he would become-

And still, Erik wished for the dream. He would bear even the shadow of the man he loved than to have Charles  
absent from his thoughts.

-=-=

[Erik comes back on Tuesdays.](http://motleypatches.tumblr.com/post/18877363104/erik-comes-back-on-tuesdays-he-never-gets-use-to) He never gets use to it: the way he must steal in to the mansion like a thief, the pills by the bed, the changes to the doorways, the order of books on the bookshelves. Sometimes he thinks he’s punishing himself, but he stays until Charles wakes up. Charles can lose himself in other people’s thoughts, but in his bed, next to the warmth of his body, Erik makes an argument (for the Brotherhood, for himself): they’re not merely a whim, an idea, or a dream. He refuses to think that it’s because he doesn’t want to leave.

-=-=

[“I dare you,” says Charles to Erik every Tuesday.](http://motleypatches.tumblr.com/post/18027209822/i-dare-you-says-charles-to-erik-every-tuesday) He is waiting for the question he knows Erik wants to ask.

Erik glares. He always wonders if Charles is mocking him by refusing to answer that question, but Charles takes out another book. He is staying for at least one more day.

-=-=

[ How do you keep a man who manipulates metal behind steel bars and a man who manipulates mind in prison? ](http://motleypatches.tumblr.com/post/16813157638/how-do-you-keep-a-man-who-manipulates-metal-behind)The solution was elegant- they did it for each other and were apart except for Tuesdays. But the arrangement made neither happy. The enforced passivity ended no arguments and offered no compromises. Charles and Erik only learned that they could not bear to be parted and would only be enemies to a point.

-=-=

[ In the early hours of an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday,](http://motleypatches.tumblr.com/post/16001215303/in-the-early-hours-of-an-otherwise-unremarkable) Charles/Erik took over the world and the world liked it that Tuesday and every Tuesday afterwards; little do the humans know it’s a compromise made in the bedroom to which they owe their lives. 

-=-=


	2. Doctor Who Crossover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles Xavier met the Doctor as a child. Erik didn't know that until much later.

I. [Time Traveling](http://motleypatches.tumblr.com/post/15814874954/it-had-been-a-very-long-time-since-magneto-had)

(It had been a very long time since Magneto had been at this particular address, a relic from the days when he had been merely Erik Lehnsherr. The boxes from Westchester had remained unopened. He had never read the letter lying on top of an old sweater. The glue on the envelope was faded and brittle. The old typewriter paper and font seemed quaint. He almost smiled.)

(Redacted Extracts from the Torchwood and Stark Archives)

Dear Erik,  
Rest assured, you are far away and beyond my reach…The Doctor told me a story he said I shouldn’t believe because it doesn’t happen…I have attempted….but it no longer matters.

I remain, yours truly,

_Charles Xavier  
July, 1963_

-=-=

II.   
[Charles remembered how time-travel worked.](http://motleypatches.tumblr.com/post/15996062009/charles-remembered-how-time-travel-worked-he) He could return in a moment. Everyone was away. He knew Harkness was lying. He had no idea where the Doctor was, but why not, Charles thought viciously, I have questions and if these nanogenes could let me walk-

“Why not” for better or worse, became the theme of his dealings with Jack, but there was no need for him to know about what Canton Delaware III showed him before he left. They’ve all of time and space to set things to rights.

-=-=

III. 

[Canton had expected Erik Lehnsherr, now known as the terrorist “Magneto” to show up. ](http://motleypatches.tumblr.com/post/16813496247/set-1-set-2-now-canton-had-expected-erik) He just hadn’t realized how quickly. Magneto was invisible in the darkness without the cape and the helmet. He looked, Canton thought, very much like the man whom had smiled with Charles Xavier many (but surely it was only two) years ago, except, of course, Lehnsherr wasn’t smiling.

Charles Xavier was dead. That was, he had disappeared and there was a record of his execution. Canton hoped that Xavier had better sense of timing than the Doctor. He was growing old. The stress was bad for his heart.

“Where is he?” Erik asked, with all the confidence of a man who could kill with a thought (but no, that was Xavier. Really, what was the difference?)

“Who?” Canton asked, feigned and pretended ignorance until Erik drew out a the photograph.  
And upon seeing it, Canton felt he was cruel to tell the lie because Erik believed him and Canton knew Erik believed him because he left without saying or doing anything.

-=-=

[Interlude](http://motleypatches.tumblr.com/post/15993986158/in-the-early-days-after-their-parting-charles)

In the early days after their parting, Charles’ mind still unconsciously sought Erik’s though he would not admit it to even himself. He dreamt of a stranger, the theater of his presence an inadequate mask for the illusory nature of his existence, merely a composite of color and shape imprisoned within his own subconscious. “Do I know you?” Charles sometimes heard himself because he thought he knew all the pieces of his own mind, but the stranger never turned around.

-=-=

Erik had retained uncovered memories he had thought he had forgotten- men and women melting into the woods and never returning- a chance they’re taking, his mother had said, gripping his hand tightly. But in dreams, there was no one by his side. A single figure walked ahead. Erik had a man’s stride and a child’s panic when he couldn’t catch up. “Don’t leave me,” he finally said, but his own voice woke him and when he reached across the bed, there was no one.

-=-=

IV. [The Return](http://motleypatches.tumblr.com/post/17815031925/setfour)

It was 1923, Jack had long disappeared with one of the guests, or possibly one or two of the waitstaff when Canton called and gave him a sentence so short that it could’ve come via telegram, if only telegrams could travel through time. But despite the brevity of the message, the words lingered. Worse still, Charles’ mind could still conjure the image as clearly as he had been there. He wanted to wonder if Erik-

The air was strangling, the edge from the alcohol suddenly unpleasant. He excused himself from the houseful of guests and promised himself just a moment. It would be just a moment until he would return and he would, because Xaviers did not run away. Except, of course, they did. Everyone who ever called the Westchester home went away and left him behind.

And in that moment, there was the TARDIS and Doctor was as he remembered them both: young and old and knowing and making promises that they couldn’t and didn’t keep. There were no adventures in time and space, only an instant, infinitely prolonged. The plan was more than fair. No one had needed to suffer for his absence. If only Canton hadn’t telephoned-

“Are you here to take me back?” Briefly, he thought of Jack, but Jack’s resentment meant very little to him.

“Are you ready to go?” the Doctor asked, terribly merciful.

“Tell me what happens,” Charles insisted.

The world was very quiet. Time might have stopped. Telepathic sympathy between Timelord and human would always be an unspoken secret. The Doctor whispered: “Can’t you see?”

Charles didn’t want to, but he could. All telepathic minds of sufficient power possessed certain amount of prescience. What was the future except actions sown beneath manifold contemplations and illusions? Charles had always been too powerful for his own good…  
Only an invented mind, a dream-mind, was beyond his reading, but, he had, perhaps, known who the stranger was all along even if he wouldn’t admit it in the waking world.

“I can’t see myself,” Charles wanted to say, but even the thought hollowed his chest and he had no spare that could keep him alive.

-=-=

V. 

[Moira is fate and she cannot be changed. ](http://motleypatches.tumblr.com/post/19671399483/the-last-replay-im-sorry-unforgott3n-moira-is#notes)So in any verse, Shaw dies without a nuclear war and there must be Magneto and there must be Professor X. When Erik finally meets the Doctor of Charles’s childhood, he plays the most dangerous game he knows- one that Shaw taught him. He changes the course of another bullet.

He would live, but Charles’ distrust would be easier to bear when he knows that Magneto and Professor X would still stand against each other, without guilt and without shame between them.

Erik heads to Cuba alone with Moira.

-=-=


	3. AU: The Alliance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why Mutant Prisons Are Not a Good Idea

Charles Xavier was born in the prison system that housed the generations of Xavier family and other families and individuals like them- mutant threats to humanity. To them, Genosha was not a prison, but a safe haven for mutants. Charles had never known the world outside, but unlike his peers, he knows what it is. He is the most powerful telepath in history and the strangest. He would speak with his voice even to those who is the first in the family to manifest. Charles’ mind goes beyond the confinement of the supposed anti-telepathic walls, beyond the prison itself, but he has never known anyone else who thought they could and should go beyond what Genosha ~~gives~~ allows them.

By the time he visits Erik Lehnsherr, it’s almost too late. Erik's not a man who has many friends and due to its history, Genosha’s never been an easy place for any newcomer.

Charles announces his patronage telepathically. He crosses the boundaries between the blocks housing the elemental mutants and the mentation mutants. 

To Erik he says, “You are not alone.”

History has shown that divide and conquer is the best strategy against a lethal force with superior offensive capabilities. Drive them apart, even the strong may be weak. Isolate them, the most determined soldier will surrender, the strongest castle will fall when they believe they’ve no allies. 

But no one remembered history when they panic. Every mutant in the world is in Genosha.

It only takes one thought, one mind, one enemy. Peace is no longer an option.


	4. AU: Blind Criminal!Charles/Investigator!Erik fic

“Francis Xavier.” And his hand is warmer than his eyes.

“Isn’t he a saint?” Erik asked.

Charles startled, then laughed. “That I would’ve called myself Simon Templar.” His smile quite transformed his face, the edge of his glance stirringly innocent. “Fancy a game of Simon Says or would you prefer me canonized?” He looked down at himself. “Not exactly in priestly attire today.”

“No more games,” Erik said, leaning back on the bed and closing his eyes. “I’ve been chasing you for years.”

“Chasing?” Charles teased, his breath hot above Erik’s face. “Or waiting?” He paused, as if Erik would answer; a tendril of hair tickled Erik’s skin. “How are you even sure I am me? But that’s the thrill, isn’t it? Am I the doctor or the criminal? Watson or Moriarty? Oh Erik…” He brushed a soft kiss over Erik’s forehead, another on the bridge of his nose. Erik felt the tattoo of his own heartbeat above the roar in his ears as Charles’ breath hovered above his mouth, his lips suddenly sensitive to each whisper of air. “Surely you don’t believe Sherlock Holmes could exist in the 21st century. And if there’s no Sherlock, there’s no Moriarty.”

Erik could finish the thought, the labyrinthine logic of Charles’s brilliant, shining, infectious mind- they needn’t be apart.

Eyes still shut, he lifted his head and space contracted in the press of their mouths. And what was justice compared to desire? They were both blind.


	5. AU: The Dystopian Mendelian Garden - Peas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles and Erik's vegetable love.

It was sunny. The bees were buzzing, the birds singing faraway. The bells for lauds tolled merrily while the brothers began their prayers.

It was a perfect Thursday morning, as much as Thursdays could be perfect. At the edge of the garden, Erik woke, but Erik was always an early riser.

Charles was examining Erik’s buds with deeply interested look. They were still damp with dew, but under the first rays of the sun, he thought he could glimpse-

He said, “Do you know if both of you parents are completely white?”

Erik looked offended.

Charles went on, blithely, “Even if they both are, I really think you might have bit of a purple coming in.” He looked up at Erik. Despite early promise, Charles had turned out a bit short. “How do you feel about purple?”

Before Erik could answer, a Raven landed nearby, but not enough to crush the nearby plants. Erik’s suspicious of Raven’s propensity to land so close to the garden, especially to Charles. Even worse, Charles sometimes turned toward her instead toward Erik.

“He could be pink,” Raven said. She gave Erik once-over that made Erik want to furl his leaves and hide himself. “You’d look good in pink.”

“He would,” Charles said just at the same time as Erik said, “I would not.” He looked perfect in blue.

They stared at each other. A breeze pushed Charles toward Erik. Their leaves brushed.

“You know I wouldn’t mind whatever colour you wear.”

“I know,” Erik said sadly. Charles was different. Erik lived at the edge and with every passing week, they were learning that Charles was not part of the Plan at all. He was like the dandelions and the birds, something out of nature and unexpected. It was only chance that brought them together, but any day now and he could be taken away.

It didn’t take long for the flowers. Erik was neither purple nor pink nor even white, but a mix of all of the colours.

A great noise had resulted, but the noise had distracted them from seeing Charles, smaller, nestled beside him.

“They will want to breed you now,” Charles said, sadly, afterwards. He knew these things.

When the day went away and night fell, under the moonlight, Charles bloomed and he was unlike Erik had ever seen or imagined. His petals were the colors of sky in the morning.

Erik could feel the earth changing as they touched. He said: “Peas was never an option.”

-=-=

It was getting colder, but the wooden frames in the garden were green with life. The sun rose late, there was a desperate edge in the bird songs, which grew worryingly louder and closer. Raven had been looking ravenous.

But it was after the flowers. The noise went away. Erik was examined at length, subject of much excitement, but was eventually left alone. He shed the petals as early as he dared and Charles with him.

Entangled at the edge of the trellis, they looked practically the same at least to the ignorant noise, Charles was safe for one more season.

Erik had shielded himself from the others, so when the time came, he worried about the unexpected weight. Charles made no mention of it, so Erik pretended that it was just his own paranoia.

It had happened before of course, before Charles. He remembered only a glimpse —wrinkled and yellow, so very small— taken away even as he was still recovering. He had named her nevertheless.

And yet Magda was beside him then. Her parentage was like his.

Charles was something else altogether.

“Erik,” Charles sighed. It was harder to touch him now, as Erik felt the pods grew heavier. “It’s all right, whatever you choose to do. I can always-” He sighed again. “I understand.” The ineffable Plan, that plan that meant periodic noise and the violence in the air that disturbed all his senses.

“I don’t know what happened, Charles. I swear, nothing did.” Erik didn’t know what he was protesting. If anything, he would blame the wind. “If I would have peas with anyone, it would be with you.”

Charles said nothing, but merely rested his stem against Erik. They were twined together.”I’ve always wanted peas. I had hoped.”

Erik didn’t know Charles had hoped, but for the first time, he realised he also hoped for peas.

So when he bore them, neither yellow, wrinkled, green or round— but separate from all the others and undoubtedly Charles’ peas-

“Ours,” Charles reminded him as he cooed over Pietra, Wanda, David, and Lorna, “Our peas.”

-=-=


	6. AU: When They Were Fruits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erik and Charles are fruits, literally.
> 
> Warnings for puns.

1\. WerefruitBanana!Charles/Avocado!Erik

Once in a full moon, Charles turns into a fruit.

And Erik never knew he liked bananas so much he wondered if he’s a fruit as well. A latent inclination, a late manifestation. But at least he wasn’t alone. 

Erik was ripe for the plucking, but Charles didn’t want to rush.

The weather warmed slowly. When the next full moon came, when Charles reached out, Erik’s skin was a dusky blush.

Erik was tense, but when pressed a little, yielded. 

“Are you all right?” Charles asked softly. 

“Don’t be a nut and spoil me, Charles,” Erik gritted out and Charles slid in smoothly. 

They’ve little time together as fruits, but Charles was still careful about bruising the flesh. He didn’t want to take so long that Erik would be spoiled, but Charles wanted to be tender. It was Erik’s first time, after all.

There was a joy in being together with him that Charles knew was within them both, a seed that could blossom into something beautiful. Together, they could be anything. The flowering an age of mutant peace. Their efforts would not be fruitless. 

-=-=

2\. Alone In A Jar- Peach!Charles/Nectarine!Erik

“You are not alone,” Charles said fuzzily when he was thrown down next to Erik. “We are the same.”

“We are the better fruits,” Erik answered, eventually, softening toward Charles as the days went on. “The others don’t have the stones.” The others were content, silent.

In a warm afternoon, they peeled each other out of their coats. Charles gloried on Erik’s firm naked curves. Erik feasted on Charles’ pale flesh.

The sweetness of each other’s company after such a long time alone was intoxicating, but they were waiting for the inevitable. Bruises bloomed, growing darker in the last sunlight of the summer.

On their last night, the glow of their bodies were muted in the darkness as they wait for the Slicer. At least, they would be together.

-=-=


	7. AU: Erik is a Pine, Charles is a Sage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If a tree falls (in love) in a forest and no one hears it, does it make any sound?

The thick understory of the forest had sheltered the Xavier family as long as he could remember. It had been a while, however, since he had travelled home. It took a while before he felt comfortable with his roots.

“Charles Xavier,” he introduced himself while it was raining one day, the thick droplets slipping off the branches overhead.

“Charles,” repeated the other, then, curtly, “Erik, pine.”

“You pine?” Charles asked, amused. “What do you pine for, Erik?”

“I am a pine,” Erik said, though he sounded foreign and uncomfortable, feelings which Charles knew, so he didn’t press, but merely admired how tall and straight Erik was and introduced his sister, a golden sage from the Raven islands.

Erik didn’t seem interested until Charles mentioned that they were perennials.

“I did know there were others like me.”

“You are not alone, Erik,” Charles said cheerfully and, he confessed to himself, hopefully, because he didn’t like to be alone either, and it was hard to tell if Raven would like this place. She was a transplant, after all.

When the sun came out after the long rainy season, Charles noticed the green in Erik, the strength in him and thought that if Erik wished it, Charles wouldn’t mind being by his side all his life. They had been growing toward each other, roots almost touching, and a feeling poked at him-

“Are those your needles, or are you just happy to see me?”

“You drive me nuts,” Erik said, unimpressed, but he said it fondly now. “I won’t prick you unless you want it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: Sage belong in the genus Salvia (sounds like Xavier? XD) and Raven Island transplant is sagebrush.


	8. AU: Charles Does a Waggle Dance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles is a bee. Erik is a peaplant.
> 
> Apologies for puns, really.

Charles buzzed around Erik constantly. At first Erik was annoyed. “Settle petal,” Charles said. “It’s not going to hurt.” 

Before Erik could ask “what”, he felt Charles. “You are inside my-” he began, then stopped. He tottered briefly. The feeling was so strange and so right. It seemed that a part of him was to made to fit around Charles.

A month later, Erik gave up the purple, and there were peas.

Charles still came around sometimes, hovering over them, keeping all the others away. Erik and the peas were his.


	9. AU: A Mantelpiece Tale (Porcelain!Chares/Mouse!Erik)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles is an antique. Erik has just discovered him.

Once upon a time, in a great house in Westchester county, there were forty-two bedrooms, six great rooms, three libraries, and fifty-eight fireplaces. One of these fireplaces was in the nursery, where two figures had stood together for nearly twenty years on the mantelpiece. One of them was a tin soldier called Raven, for her armour had turned all black when a drunken hand knocked her into a dying fire and wasn’t retrieved until the next day. She never went back into the toybox, but was placed next to the porcelain figure.

 

The porcelain figure was called Charles. He was made in Britain, but in the Sevres style- soft colors, classical lines, and a gentle expression. He had been a gift and stood in the library until the war and all the precious objects in the libraries, most of the bedrooms, and all the great rooms had to be moved or packed up as the great house was turned into a hospice.

When the war ended, all the pieces were auctioned off, but Charles remained because the boy who had took him to place him in the nursery never told anyone and never came home. There were other toys in the room. The small crossed sword logo of Meissen porcelain on Charles’ was glazed blue and the same colour as his coat, too unremarkable for the new master of the house to notice.

The tin soldier loved the porcelain figure with all her staid and steady heart. She had never spoken to an ornament before, but Charles had been at museums and expositions, always alone. No one had ever placed someone next to him. When he met Raven, he said she was the best thing that ever happened to him. Raven, who had always had to jostle for place in the toybox, who had been placed in formation, crushed underfoot before her fall into the fireplace, would’ve blushed if she could to be compared to precious collections whose names were even more grand and unpronounceable than their owners’.

There was no more children in the house. The nursery was not needed and grew neglected. The figures slept. There was a hole in skirting board that grew bigger and bigger and no one noticed until one day Raven yelled as something wet and gleaming twitched in the dark. A moment later, a soft furry body followed, running across the threadbare carpet.

“I didn’t know people put dolls on mantelpieces,” said the mouse, looking up. “They usually leave them on the bed.”

“You’re very presumptuous,” Raven said, “he’s an antique.”

The mouse skittered up the armchair onto the mantelpiece and looked at Charles up and down. 

“He’s an antique doll then,” said the mouse. “My name’s Erik and you look sweet.” He licked one pale porcelain cheek. It had a pretty blush. 

“Hello Erik,” said Charles, laughing brightly. “Your whiskers tickle. I’ve never seen anything move so fast. Are you staying?”

“Staying?” Erik looked left and right, up and down. “Do you have any food here? Do you have a cat?”

“There used to be a cat,” answered Charles dreamily. “It use to curl up in front of the fire in the library and purr. It was shooed off the writing desk quite often, it had very soft fur.”

The mouse was stung. “I can purr. I have soft fur. Feel.” He twined around Charles until he agreed. 

Raven said, a little jealous. “There are boxes of biscuits in the desk.” 

The biscuits were very old, but had been packaged carefully. Erik sliced it open with his teeth and nibbled on one before carrying one back to the mantle.

“Would you like some?” he asked Charles, then Raven, because it was polite. Raven frightened him slightly- she had a sword, after all.

“I think you need tea to go with those. Remember the tea-service I told you about, Raven?” Raven did and commented that all the teacups she had met were arrogant and toffee-nosed, looking down at her from the table. Charles looked at the proffered large crumb suspiciously. “Anyways, we don’t eat.” Then his expression softened. “Thank you, Erik, but you see, we can’t even really move.”

“So you can’t get down from here by yourselves?” Erik asked. Neither Charles nor Raven could, of course, although Raven volunteered to take a tumble with Erik if he liked as she was more sturdy than Charles. Erik didn’t think it was a good idea.

“There’s a new cat that comes in the house sometimes, though it’s not suppose to.” said Erik. “They call him Sebastian. It ate my mother.”

Charles perked up at this piece of information, however, at the prospect of new people in the house. New people, new children. The nursery would be opened up again. 

Erik was skeptical. “I’ve always been alone,” he said. “Ever since Sebastian ate my mother. His brothers killed my siblings. I was born in the barn. The people weren’t kind to us.”

Charles had heard only heard of the rumors of a barn existing when he was in the library. He knew it was a long way from the house. His respect for Erik grew.

“Children can be kind,” he offered. “Raven would tell you the same thing.”

“They are and rather fun,” Raven said, “even if a little rough.” Strictly speaking, she preferred being alone with Charles and saw Erik’s presence as disturbing. Charles was showing an inordinate amount of interest in something that was so twitchy.

“A child let Sebastian into the house. Sebastian killed my mother,” Erik said. This was apparently a theme with him.

“Sebastian’s not here. That door’s never been opened.” 

Erik was skeptical, because he knew the doorknob had rattled lately, but he returned day after day, to nibble at the biscuits and to talk with them. Charles delighted in everything Erik knew and Erik took the same, if not more interest. Sometimes he came and sat next to Charles and didn’t even talk, but merely occasionally rubbed himself against Charles, shivering and closing his eyes. There was small chess set that Erik talked about having in his lair and Charles recalled the onyx and ivory pieces on a marble chessboard which he had known from afar. They both stared at the dead half-broken set in the corner of the nursery wistfully.

Raven thought the entire affair rather awful and recalled, with a sick feeling, that this was the sort of thing that got her forgotten on a mantelpiece. And still, Charles seemed happy. When they began to talk about a possible ramp which Erik could construct and so get both Charles and Raven safely down, Raven forgot her own wariness, overcame with the idea of seeing all those places and things that Erik talked about. She was tired of the painting of stupid kittens tangled in skeins of wool and tired of sleeping. She thought she would like to see the grass again and even mud. Charles had never seen smut except the ones painted on ceilings or drawn in books. 

“Perhaps once, it’s a very long time ago.” Erik promised to show him some. 

But days before their project was completed, the door, which had been shut for the last nineteen years, suddenly opened. A small light brown shape darted across the floor. “Erik?” Charles said, then became frightened, because behind Erik was a cross-looking cat in pursuit. 

The cat must be Sebastian. It was thin, with oily fur, not at all like the cat Charles had known in the library, and after it had knocked down all of Erik and Charles and Raven’s hard work, it was holding Erik between its paws, right beneath the mantlepiece.

Charles thought if he could move, just a little, he could save Erik. He concentrated. Sebastian extended his claws. They were long and sharp. Erik yelled and Charles felt as it was his own pain. Sebastian opened his mouth. Charles thought about all the times Erik had been next to him, all the promises and the world they would show each other. He thought of Erik’s contentment, how he only rested when he was next to Charles, and leapt.

Sebastian yowled and let go of Erik. There was a tremendous noise. Someone was walking up the stairs. The door swung open wider. 

“Who let that animal inside the house?” a woman cried, then saw the mess. She picked up a dazed looking Sebastian by the scruff the neck and carried him downstairs and called the authorities. 

Raven had landed on her feet, for when Charles jumped, she followed. Erik looked at Charles. He had landed on Sebastian’s head and then bounced toward a pile of dusty yarn, but there was a long ugly crack on his back. 

Charles studied the ceiling for a while. It was a new perspective. Vaguely, he understood he would never be able to stand upright again. He knew what happened to broken or shattered procelain, even ones supposedly as expensive as he was. After all they had forgotten him and the logo might have been chipped.

Erik came into view, anxious, his gray eyes filling with tears. “Charles, I never meant to hurt you. Come with me,” he said, stay at my side.

And all of Charles’ worries disappeared. Erik had managed to make his whole bigger. He took Charles and Raven to his lair, which was the vast underground network, as old houses would have, full of lively creatures. There was the promised chess set. Raven stayed a while, but returned to the nursery when once agan there was children in the house. 

Meanwhile, with Charles there, Erik’s lair became a home and he and Charles lived happily ever after.

-=-=

They died at the same moment, for when Erik’s soul left him, Charles could no longer bear it. When the renovators finally came, mouse bones and shattered priceless porcelain were found mingled together.

-=-=


	10. AU: Nesting (oviparous mutants)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erik didn't know he was pregnant.
> 
>  
> 
> Warnings for mpreg.

The first time Erik was pregnant, he didn’t know. It wasn’t uncommon for first-time fathers. It was more unusual that he thought he was dying. While he had always had a trim physique, he was certain that the hard bulge beneath his navel wasn’t natural. 

“You’re pregnant,” Charles said that evening when Erik was about speak, then, noticing Erik’s expression. “Oh, you didn’t know.”

Growing up with Schmidt hadn’t exactly gave him a very good idea of biology beyond the use of his powers. And afterwards, he didn’t realise he was among the small percent of men who could give birth. Charles had married him without the reassurance or the promise of a family. 

“We are going to be fathers,” Charles continued, his hand still covering the small bump. 

“Are you certain?” It wouldn’t be fair, but Erik’s certain that the universe had never been fair. Glancing at Charles’ hopeful eyes, he amended: it was *usually* not fair. 

“I’m a doctor. Not that kind, I know, but-” 

Charles finally took his hand away, but seemed unable to resist stroking Erik’s abdomen, about which Erik was suddenly feeling very protective. He covered Charles’ hand with his own. “Yes, I’ll let Hank take a look.”

The machine showed him just a month along. “You’re about due,” Hank said, blankly, after delicately prodding the surrounding tissue. The bloodwork and ultrasound had came back within normal ranges. “Granted, you’re a bit on the thin side, but,” he indicated the space between thumb and forefinger, “1inch to 2in protrusions showing usually just gives you about a week before the due date”

“You have been eating a lot,” Charles was saying beside Erik, reading his thoughts. “I wouldn’t worry,” But when Erik turned to look, Charles he did appear worried, his brow furrowed as if encountering some unruly student or a badly written paper. Meanwhile, he was still stroking up and down Erik’s stomach- Erik stopped it. 

Charles took a deep breath. “We’ve to prepare a nest.”

-=-=

Nesting, according to what Erik knew, was merely the occasional observation that department stores had sale and sections devoted to the activity. He had no idea how to even begin.

“It’s all instinct,” Hank said dubiously when he cornered him one day and asked. He was also looking downright purple with embarrassment. “I didn’t specialize,” he finally squeaked, and fled. 

Charles was nowhere to be seen, but a low hum at the back of his mind, running parallel with the sense of metal so that Erik had two certainties in the world. A child! A child to walk these halls, slide that banister. Erik thought that Charles was trusting him with his child then he should be at least worthy of this trust. He consulted a few catalogs Raven had left lying around, explored the attics, and the vast Xavier library. The catalogs were written in jargon. The attics were dusty and strange. He found himself lying in midst of a stacks of books when he heard Charles call his name.

It was embarassing. Erik hadn’t even known that Charles had been standing there and if he had been standing there then- Erik’s eyes strayed to the open pages, where “Pregnancy -Care and Feeding for the Nesting Couple” glared from the page from some Victorian tome. 

“My mother told me that they had a team for it. Family, you know.” Erik blinked. The eggs needed to be incubated for at least the first few months if not longer to ensure survival. “Oh, I’m sure I was fine for the first six months, but afterwards my mother didn’t like the hours. My father brought me out. I had a wet nurse, too. Mother didn’t want to ruin her figure.” 

“So will you be hiring a…team?” The word seemed strange. Erik associated teams with sports and military operations, but perhaps pregnancy was a bit of both. Charles’ hands were in his pockets. He was looking down at the floor, giving off the impression of a recalcitrant schoolboy. The father of my child, Erik thought.

“I thought,” Charles began, “we can build a nest together. That is,” he finally looked up, eyes wide, oddly shy, “if you’re willing. I know it’s unusual, but I want to help, if you allow it. I’ve already bought supplies.” 

This last he said softly, as if Erik would disapprove. The father of my child, Erik thought again, and his eyes prickled. 

-=-=

A truck came up the Graymalkin Drive three days later. Erik saw it from the study window and didn’t think much of it. Schools needed a lot of supplies. He continued to pay it no mind until he noticed Raven was ordering Sean and Alex to “be careful” in increasing volume and Charles rushing past the door.

When Erik arrived at the front hall and watching the mountain of boxes being unloaded Charles was looking a little peaky. 

“Supplies,” Raven said grimly as she lifted a box twice her size. “We’re taking them up to Charles’ room. Sorry, you guys’ room. I suppose that’s where you’ll be. Your bed is too small. Unless,” she frowned, “do you want a new bed?”

“It’s fine,” Erik heard his own voice sound a bit faint though he couldn’t keep himself from smiling. He looked at Charles.

“I know egg-tooth has theoretically disappeared from the gene pool, but do you think there may be just one-” Sean muttered as he marched up the stairs

-=-=

On a quiet Monday morning in winter, Erik took his usual route around the grounds, but a gripping pain caught Erik then disappeared as soon as it came. 

He caught the egg just as it exited his body in the shower. Charles had already burst into the bathroom, taking in the scene with a combination of deep terror and fascination. Blood was swirling down the drain. 

The egg was a deep blue colour, so dark that it looked black until held up to the light. It felt as smooth as polished metal and there were glimmers of black striations. It was about the size of a fist and had the weight of bowling ball.

Handing it tentatively to Charles, Erik dried himself off and they both climbed back into bed, cradling the egg between them into the cave of pillows and blankets they had painstakingly constructed, their hands overlapping as they held it.

-=-=

Over the next few weeks, either Erik or Charles was always with the egg. Erik liked holding it. Charles had consulted every medical book in the county and developed routines for turning it. Then, the deep blue began to lighten and the black turned out merely to be a darker shade of blue. It was a very beautiful egg. 

Charles and Erik slept curled around their child. The antique alcoved bed, at night, with the curtains drawn, seemed a warm dark cave. Erik felt safe within it, protected, with his husband and child and a mass of blankets and pillows. 

Before nesting, Erik had never known so many types of pillows existed. For every stage of nesting, different types of pillows and blankets were required. As the egg grew larger and softer, the pillows had to be firmer, the blankets thicker but lighter, both for comfort, practicality, and safety, in case the egg was hatched early.

By spring, the egg was the color of Charles’ eyes and the little girl— there had been another ultrasound— was almost visible. The hard outer shell was a long gone, the leathery membraneous material was fading before Erik’s eyes, revealing a moving reddish shape. It was like seeing his daughter through an opaque bubble. When she moved, the whole egg moved now. Erik put his hand against it one day and saw in wonder her tiny hand spread against his own. 

“She knows me.”

“She could hear us,” Charles whispered, gently now. She was so big between them. “What should we call her?”

But Erik had been distracted. Ours, he was thinking, my daughter, my family.

-=-=

He was in a lovely dream, floating, when he felt the break of waves and Charles shouting his name.

Erik came awake to a soaking wet bed. Charles was destroying the pillow fort and flinging the blankets about. 

“Our water broke, darling!”

The egg was gone. Erik couldn’t breath. “You broke it,” he said, numbly.

“She’s grown, she’ll survive. Why isn’t she crying?” Charles’s voice came in double. Erik reached for the lights with his power. Afterwards, he wouldn’t remember, but apparently when he saw a little green-haired baby sniveling into a pillow he cradled her to his chest and wept.

He remembered Charles started crying, however, the exact moment Lorna wailed. 

-=-=

Lorna’s slept now in bassinet, sometimes on Erik’s side, sometimes on Charles. They did end up buying a new mattress. Erik didn’t know what to say when Charles announced that three generations of Xaviers had been born on that bed except to add that that she would be a Lehnsherr, too.

She was the first.

Having the center of the bed back soon added her a sibling. The harrowing experience of transporting Lorna out of the pillow fort only to determine the gender made Charles and Erik decide it being unnecessary.

“We’ll love it just the same,” Erik said. The colors were different this time, as if two color palettes clashing. “I think it’s going to have four arms,” Erik cooed to the shadowy shape squirming within, throwing a blanket over it.

Charles gave him a dubious look across the top of the egg. “I think they’re twins.”

-=-=


	11. Civil War AU: The Mutant Question

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles and Erik had met in the War, fighting for the Union. We've some of their correspondence from the Reconstruction Era.

I.

“You are not alone,” he promised during the war.

The war has ended. The words are more than wind. “Believe me, Erik, I will get you out.”

_  
Hon. Ulysses Grant, President of the United States,_

_Dear Sir,_

_I beg respectfully for the life of one man who had fought preserve the Union of his country but is now condemned as a murderer and a traitor. Erik Lehnsherr is a decorated soldier, a man who fought bravely and saved my life and others. Although, he would freely admit to being an abolitionist before the War, the injustice of his prosecution is readily perceivable, for it rested on his views on the Mutant question. While the Administration has been reluctant to commit to official policy after the Emancipation, the aftermath of the war and the awareness of what seemed to be a new kind of men, commonly called “Mutants”, have allowed other men to take advantage of fear and ignorance in order to take exploit or ostracize their neighbors for gain._

_During the course of my friendship with Erik Lehnsherr, he has never been able to stand aside when faced with those who would benefit from his defense. Sebastian Shaw’s conspiracy of violence would not have only affected Mutants but other men and women, and children, who resided in close proximity……_

_……the moral necessity of Emancipation has been finally recognized, it would be Vile Hypocrisy and a stain upon the Nation’s character to allow the unnecessary suffering of people to persist. The Union has been preserved at great cost, if we are to avoid further fatal divisions of the nation, sending it into another conflict, let us not close our eyes to the fact that the existence of Mutants- men and women gifted with special genius- is owed to the same Creator as other men, and being citizens of this Nation, owed life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness no less than their fellow men…._

_…._

-=-= 

_Erik also had very little patience, but Charles hoped that he could wait at least until the trial. And if the outcome proved unfavorable-_

_Charles didn’t break his promises._

_-=-=_

_II._

_The Pinkerton detectives uncovered a second plot for the assassination of Professor Charles Xavier of Westchester, New York, after the attempt only a few days ago. At the order of Senator Kelley, they have surrounded the Xavier estate for the protection of the professor and the students boarding at “Institute of Gifted Youngsters”. Capt. Stryker vows to “find the culprit of the despicable crime at all cost.”_

_Professor Xavier, formerly Colonel Xavier of the Union Army, is a great supporter of Frederick Douglass and a contributor to the debates on the emerging Mutant Question._

_-=-=_

_Telegram to Erik Lehnsherr:_

_Bleeding will not stop Come at once stop_

_-=-=_

_Dear Diary,_

_Ms. Grey asked me to take a telegram to be sent as the detectives think I look harmless. She says it’s to “A great friend of the professor”._

_Dear Diary,_

_The detectives left quite suddenly. The professor asked for more than broth today. Dr. McCoy looks pleased. I have not yet seen the great friend but I am thankful._

_-=-=_


	12. Genderbend: f!Charles/f!Erik

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If Erik and Charles were female during XMFC....but they were still the better men.

I. Charlotte Xavier

Moira MacTaggert was the daughter of factory workers; she grew up knowing the cost of every book, pair of shoes, every gas bill.

At university, she kept her head down, charging forward through the remarks on her grades, her skirts, her ambitions. 

Still, Moira knew the kind of looks these people were giving her that she had spent all her life alternatively avoiding and hating.

“Ms. Xavier,” she said, no longer as bumbling as she had been when she was fourteen or even twenty-four in high-heeled shoes and long-dress.

“Ah, someone I don’t know,” Charlotte said, switching to English, eyes bright and cheeks flushed even beneath the powder. “Charmed to meet you, Moira. I may call you Moira, I hope. Would you like to meet anyone in particular? It’s so rare to find a fellow,” she smiled, her thumb brushing the gun calluses on Moira’s palm as she shook her hand, “adventureress.”

Moira had read Charlotte’s thesis. She knew, in the academic manner, that it must’ve been difficult for anyone to traverse that many miles, that far from civilization, all the while recording and observing the habits and customs of so many animals. The scholarship seemed admirable, but the method seemed so distant from what she knew that her imagination failed her. She thought Charlotte would be a bit older, a bit weather-beaten, and perhaps austere and tense in the way Moira associated with female academics she had managed to interview. She had not expected to be pointed out Ms. Charlotte Xavier, with a hand on a young man’s arm, murmuring softly while he blushed and tried to avoid looking at her decolletage. 

“I haven’t come for your endorsement,” Moira said bluntly to this high-society ornament, whose dress probably cost more than her combined salary in her parents’ lifetime, “what do you know of unusual mutations in humans?”

Charlotte Xavier lifted her hand to her temple in a gesture that looked almost like a casual adjustment of a tendril of hair. 

-=-=

They did not believe her theories. Implications of evolutionary branching were difficult concepts without Moira’s claim of a man who resembled the devil and a woman who could turn into diamond. They did not respect her sex and was suspicious of the letters behind her name, but Charlotte Xavier knew her own charms. Raven startled them. Charlotte would sooth them. 

“It would oblige me greatly,” she said to the Commander of the Coast Guard ship, while Raven rolled her eyes, but what credit Moira MacTaggert earned in carefully accrued authority could be reserved for another time.

The Commander agreed, reddening beneath his tan. What difficulty would there be? Florida nights did indeed have a reputation for being beautiful. Even if the CIA did seem too interfering and two of them were civilians- His thoughts scattered and he saw only the brilliant blue eyes that seemed to hook into his soul.

-=-=

Charlotte Xavier paced the decks, greeted sailors and soldiers, self-assured in a way that Moira only learned with a gun near her person. She wanted to be derisive of the half-risque, half-coquettish talk, and wondered a little whether it was the telepathy or if was simply Charlotte that was behind that confidence. 

-=-=

“It’s just a little drizzle,” Charlotte said to Raven, who complained of the humidity and the salt. “At least there are no leeches. Remember that flash-flood-“

When the Caspartina was spotted and the CIA decided to move out, the captain offered his cabin, which Charlotte accepted, but stood still, eyes fixed on the horizon, unaware how many were looking at her, how many were concerned, how many were speculative. 

Then Charlotte slipped, quick as anything, between the soldiers and sailors on the crowded deck, and dove into the sea in a graceful curve that haunted the adolescent dreams of the boys holidaying at Hamptons or the French Riviera years ago, but was ultimately only meant for one thing, one person-

-=-=

In the captain’s cabin, she wrung out her long, curling hair in a damp towel brusquely, then glided toward Charlotte. 

There was a deceptive grace and strength to her movements and a fine-boned severity in her face that could get her mistaken for a dancer. Charles saw Raven furtively trying to imitate it and failing

“Oh,” Charlotte sighed, and a flutter of unease began low in her stomach that had nothing to do with Erika Lehnsherr’s past or even the circumstances of their meeting. It was her enviable slenderness without underdevelopment, the shadows beneath the arch of her cheekbones, that knowing mouth, those sensuous eyes.

-=-=

 

At the CIA compound, the men didn’t question her though they looked at her. She looked back, eyebrows tilted, half-mocking, cigarette dangling from her lips, accepting a light when it was offered. She disliked that Charlotte seemed to be in command of everyone around her. Their games were too close, Erika was thinking.

That wasn’t the point.

“You could use a friend,” Charlotte said. 

-=-=

“It would be unsafe,” the protest went. The concern that was unnecessary, when one of them controlled minds and the other metal, would go unheeded. Charlotte let the agent say his piece.

Gentlemen courtliness only extended where it mattered. Charlotte Xavier, Oxford academic and New York society scion were important only where she had a role to play. In Virginia, she was no one except what she would be to Cerebro. The simple utilitarianism pleased her in some fundamental level.

But the agent had sisters, daughters, he was a good man. “We’ll be traveling in the United States,” Charlotte said, finally. “Surely it would be safe.”

Put it that way, it gave the agent, or authorities, certain pause. Xavier and Lehnsherr were two women, unlikely to threaten, easy to disavow. “Mutants” could turn out to be nothing, or everything. Charlotte was aware, after all, that they were talking to the CIA. Governments had real and imagined enemies. In the confusion, Charlotte thought she and Erika could get quite a lot out of it.

-=-=

It was easier, Charlotte knew, as women, to lean his head on Erika’s shoulder and to take her arm even her hand in public. They bedded down in overbooked hotels and shared a bed without people commenting. 

Erika didn’t think much of Charlotte’s smiles for men who “didn’t matter.” There were awful epithets for women generous with their smiles and Erika read them in people’s thoughts like she was the one with telepathy. 

Charlotte, however, knew that Erika only smiled at people she intended to hurt. It was, after all, quite formidable as a weapon. Even unsmiling, men and women noticed Erika even when she didn’t speak.

“Everyone matters somehow,” Charlotte tried to argue once. Her smiles and conversation were not given willfully- it delighted some, distracted others. Most people were more cowardly than they tried to appear. They feared death. They feared the dark. It was something primordial. Sleeping with the jungle all around her and all the cries of the hunting and the hunted, Charlotte had considered that the fear could be inherited, a genetic imprint that give rise to ancestral reason, to civilization: How could we not be afraid? 

It was a futile argument to make in the light of civilization. In her dreams and in her life, Erika was both the prey and the hunter. Fear was incidental. Irrelevant. We make what we can with what we have.

“Do you believe what you say?” Erika asked.

“Every word,” Charlotte answered.

-=-=

“You’re not alone, Erik,” Charles said in the dark one night. “You are not alone.”

-=-=

 

II. Erika Lehnsherr 

At her desk, she wondered at the name she had been given. It was foreign and sounded aristocratic. The woman’s French was fluent but heavily accented. Seeing her siting there in that impeccably tailored suit and those long legs while all the junior bank managers offered her tea, biscuits, conversation, she couldn’t hep being a little envious.

She, over there, was the sort of woman that got noticed. Anonymity would be quite beyond her. But perhaps she could afford a bit of pity. Switzerland had remained neutral, but the refugees came all had their own stories. She was beautiful. Perhaps she had grown up with the idea that people would pay court to her instead of asking, quite blatantly, where she was staying in Switzerland. Would she like a tour guide?

The clock struck. 

“He’s ready to see you,” she interrupted. 

The woman sent her an indecipherable look. The appointment was scheduled for five past.

Thirty minutes later, there was a cry from inside the room. She knocked twice. The manager had a hand pressed to his face, mumbling something about an attack. The woman was gone.

Well, this sort of thing happened sometimes. The woman had been beautiful, but you only had to look at her to know that she was the kind that would not take an insult. She made soothing sounds and looked up a dentist for him. 

-=-=

She didn’t look lost. Her dress was thin and hinted at the well-formed body beneath. She ordered a drink. The bartender was suitably impressed with her choice. They were content, the paranoia that had chased them half way across the world were fading into memory. They merely wondered who was waiting for her, whose girl she was, whose wife, whose daughter-

She sat down at the table. They tried to make conversation. She smiled back at them, told them that she was from Dusseldorf. Her exposed arm was smooth and tan. It was difficult not to look, then, not to stare, when she moved it. 

The heat curled the ends of her hair. She brushed back a loose strand as the men screamed.

-=-=

“Little Erika,” Shaw said, grinning wildly. 

She had done a lot of growing up since he had last seen her.

Emma Frost studied Erika’s memories, tormented her with them, then threw her back into the sea. Removed that distraction.

-=-=

Erika floated in the darkness, body straining, not for life, but for death.

“Let go,” said the voice in his head.

“Relax,” the others had said, a hand on her waist, near her jaw, leaning close. She had lowered her eyes, acting shy, her hands pressed on their chests so she could feel their heartbeat stop as the knife plunged through-

“You will die,” said the voice. “

So something in the body heeded that voice. Her strength gave way to some stronger impulse to live, to the arms trying to pull her back, weak except where it seemed so desperate for her to live….

-=-=

Charlotte Xavier, who looked as if she had came fresh off from a dive off of some sun-soaked pool-deck instead of a US Lifeguard Boat, was, at first glance, full of the infantine loveliness that could even smote grave men with the desire to protect her.

Erika was instantly suspicious. Her eyes lingered on those pale cheeks, that pretty mouth, then the roguish eyes that looked like as if they had distilled the color of the summer sky.

Charlotte sauntered up to her, hands hugging a mug of tea and swaddled in blankets the sailors had piled on her. Even bundles like a Russian doll, her glances were mesmerizing. Where they fall, people and things and perhaps even the heavens moved for her.

Erika, who had learned how to flirt in the awkward way of necessity, took in the way that Charlotte spoke and pouted and thought this was a child who had never been denied. But Erika, ignoring the soliticious inquiries to her comfort, the dark looks of the the CIA woman, was never more aware of how out of place Charlotte was even if everyone else did. 

If Erika should not be giving up her life for Shaw, Charlotte Xaiver should not have gone in after her.

-=-=

Erika Lehnsherr had a vague European manner, cultivated to charm, calculated to confuse. She was, more importantly, a professional. 

She could not read minds, but she could persuade. File in hand, it was time to leave. Charlotte Xavier had no goals and some ambition. Women like that were dangerous. Erika had seen them toy with politicians and generals for nothing more than certain self-satisfaction and with nothing more than the veiled suggestion that they were afraid of being ruined. 

Erika had already been ruined. Men see her and they know it, whether it was true or not. Why should she stay because Charlotte Xavier find it amusing to test her powers with g-men? Erika’s life was not a game.

But then Charlotte offered her friendship.

-=-=

She had never had a friend. Had perhaps, had one, very long ago in some forgotten place in her memory. She remembered longing for one while recovering, as they say, from the war. But around her were girls all who looked forward normality, whether it was possible or not: hearth and home and family and perhaps latkes like their mothers made.

While the coin turned in Erika’s pocket without her touching it, normality had been impossible. 

So Erika thought he had left them all behind, but Charlotte was sleeping against his shoulder in the train and the woman and child sitting in front of them were smiling: two women, traveling alone in first class, one asleep. This car had seemed safe.

Suddenly embarrassed, Erika turned her head, pressed a kiss to Charlotte’s hair and hid her face.

-=-=

Westchester had countless hearths and only one that mattered. 

In front of it-

“We are the better men,” Erik said. 

Charles didn’t disagree.

-=-=  
-=-=


	13. No Second Troy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erik reads Yeats.

Magneto had learned that Beast had published a volume of poetry under his human name. He read it and remembered that once Beast had been a young man uncertain of his place in the world outside the lab. Magneto remembered, too, another young scientist. Charles had always been too serious to write good poetry, but he had tried, nevertheless.

Once, Erik Lehnsherr had mocked and loved him for it, and perhaps, he still did. Perhaps, with time, they could’ve been more than “bookends of the same soul” but Erik suspected and jealously guarded the fact that Charles had meant _them._ Charles, Prof. X of the X-Men was much too busy to write to him or to think about them, after all. Erik was fortunate if his next chess move was answered within the month.

Nevertheless, in a safehouse in Ireland, there was time to wait and to idle. He went to the bookshelf and took down a book to answer a reference Charles had written in a letter many years ago.

“My dearest friend,” Charles had written, “I saw your new headgear today on a television screen, obscuring all the well known lines and shadows of your face. Yours is a face that would’ve launched another thousand ships had they know where to look, but I am jealous, you see, for why should I share what is mine with others? We have had our Troy and it follows us, follows me.”

The young Erik Lehnsherr had never read the Iliad or had volumes of poetry at disposal. Erik had been more alarmed that his location was not secret. Magneto thought, much belatedly, that Charles had been angry. Not because Erik had left, not because their ideals had been different, but because Charles thought himself as the coward, Paris- because of Erik he had chosen fire and sword for the world...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [No Second Troy](http://www.bartleby.com/147/36.html)


	14. Dune Crossover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles hopes.

Stark was a man of the antiquities. He existed as if the Butlerian Jihad and its causes were inconsequential and had left no lessons. There was no inherent danger in the machines, he told Charles Xavier when they were young and their houses similarly vast and echoing. The danger, he said, face aglow with light from a computer screen, always reside in the operator and the programmer. Just like, he would say, leaning suddenly very close, the heat of his body palpable and setting Charles’ heart to race, that the danger of the body was in the mind and not the limbs.

And what was dismissed in laughter than — for Stark had no fear of telepathy when all he had known was lack of understanding — became a bitter thought some twenty-thousand years later in the sands of Arrakis. Buried beneath millenia of sleep, for a brief moment, Charles Xavier awoke under Leto’s yoke and saw a world without metal and without machines. And he, powers of the mind be damned, never mind the fascinating evolutionary process, was alone again.

Ah, but there had been Ghanima-

Ghanima for Leto.

And when Ghanima was gone and Leto called for Charles Xavier that he finally saw the future. They had all been futurists once, but when the first Ixian weaponized individual aircraft dotted the skies, Charles _knew_ with a terrible certainty that the Stoic adage was true: history was always happening. And so, though there was war, a small, quiet, and unallowable, part of him was glad. Spice prolonged life, spice expanded consciousness --a disquieting rumor of a Sardaukar who controlled metal at the outskirts of the Known Universe-- Charles could wait and hope until all was restored to him: life, love, and joy.


	15. Imaginary Erik

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Charles has imagined Erik.

His legs are unmoving. His mind alone travels- Charles is alone because he has always been alone and a telepath is never wrong. There has never been anyone, it was all just a magic trick for himself- a boy in an old, echoing house.


	16. A Dream of the Days Future Past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles and Erik are in the intelligence services.

It had been a long time since Erik contacted Charles. Two years since Charles found himself almost unemployable in the intelligence service after one bad call. Shaw was dead, which counted for something even if he shouldn’t have gotten involved with (or rather “in”, Raven had snickered) with Erik Lehnsherr. Charles had been on his best behavior since then.

When he picked up the call, Erik, no, Magneto, sounded as mad as he’s been purported be. “He’s coming for me,” Erik said, then the phone went dead.

-=-=

Two weeks and sixty thousand miles later, Charles found himself in Westchester, New York- the Xavier estate, tracing an insistent thought. It made no sense.

The answer stepped out behind a pillar.

“He will always betray you, Charles,” said the man. He was bearded and older, but that was the same face which Charles saw every day in the mirror in the morning. “I didn’t think you would find me.”

He was a telepath, too, Charles realised. He couldn’t read his thoughts. “What have you done with Erik?”

“Extracted our revenge. I am from across the future. I’ve travelled across dimensions.”

“To what? Hurt an innocent man? Where’s Erik?” Even if Raven persuaded Moira to believe him, it would take days to sweep the whole estate.

His alterego shook his head. “You and I both know that Erik Lehnsherr is not innocent. How long did it take before you could walk again? It’s the 21st century. You’re fortunate.”

“It was an accident!” Charles couldn’t hurt him with his mind, but this was Kurt’s study, which meant there was a gun somewhere. “Erik didn’t mean to hurt me.”

“He never means to, but he always does.” He sounded gentle. “I am you, Charles Xavier. At least, I had been until travel…broadened my horizons.”

“Who are you now?” Charles asked, inching closer to the gun in the trick drawer.

“Onslaught.”

Charles raised the gun and cocked back the safety. His mind had narrowed on the thought. It must be Erik, incoherent and faint. In one of Kurt’s bunkers, then. “Being me, Onslaught, you know I don’t share.”

-=-=


	17. The Tryst

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles and Erik are revolutionaries in their own way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Accompanying gifset [here](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/diogenes-club-has-been-and-seen-everything-throughout-holmesian-fandom)

The first time they met, they knew. Their boyhood furtive readings of Aristophanes’ myth was true. There were always minds to change in government, revolutions to incite abroad, and yet-

They could pretend to be strangers. Borrow a light, a cigarette case, and let their fingers touch in the smoke. It was never enough. They keep themselves fastidiously to themselves and by mutual agreement, their circles do not cross.

The meetings are always accidents at the appointed time and at the appointed place, access granted by a mutual acquaintance. “A surprise,” Charles always said. “A pleasure,” Erik would reply. They were two old friends, long time apart, sitting down to a meal, to wine, to conversations of war and politics that lasted into the night until all the cabs were gone from the street and Erik had missed his train.

“I’ve a room,” Charles would offer.

“Yes,” Erik answered, all gracious assent.

And in the privacy of that room, in the presence of each other, memories of longing and of absence were erased and even waiting became a pleasure. Silence replaced words when they were together and whole.


	18. Mutant Husbands AU: Kitten with Socks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where they live (mostly) happily in the mansion together. Erik finds out about the Fortean times.

Erik’s leafing through McCoy’s scientific journals before he asks, “Do you think I can imitate MRI?”

“Only if you force some poor soul to swallow contrast first," Charles answers.

“What about wormholes? Maybe I can open the passage to another universe.”

“What?”

“Maybe you can do some projections on an astral plane.”

“Erik, what on earth are you reading? I thought we’re looking for new directions for training our powers.” Charles walks over and starts laughing, realizing that Hank McCoy subscribes to Fortean Times.

“I don’t know why you’re laughing,” Erik said. “There’s a whole section on potential of telepathy.”

-=-=

Charles is putting on his pajamas when Erik says, ”I think we should have a child.”

“There are at least half a dozen in the mansion.”

“I mean, one of our own, half of me and half of you.”

“Erik, darling, I know your education has been spotty, but that’s not really possible. Neither of us is equipped for it, as far as I know.”

Charles slips into bed, slips his arms around Erik’s naked torso before seeing a disturbingly familiar cover on the bedside table. McCoy’s “Fortean Times”. It is quickly becoming the bane of his existence. “You know that magazine’s mostly science-fiction, don’t you?”

“Didn’t I successfully clean up the blood the other day?” Erik challenges and flexes his beautifully long fingers. 

Charles sighs. He is a scientist and by no means squeamish, but he’d much rather the handkerchief approach for a nosebleed rather than watching the blood globules float to the rubbish. He takes hold of Erik’s hand, tangles their fingers together.

“I don’t think you can create life through magnetism. Life is very complicated” Actually, come to think of it- Charles stops the path of thought. It’s been a long day. He’s tired. He should not be talking about the potential of telepathy, electro-magnetic fields, and cell division.

“But you can.”

“What?”

“You can guide me,” Erik says excitedly. Charles has never been a night person. Erik, however, seems to have discovered night-owl aspect to his personality eversince he was eating three or five square meals a day and regularly getting full night’s sleep. “Or perhaps just by your thoughts,” He starts stroking Charles’ hair.

Charles yawns. “Yes, dream children, it’s all we’ll ever have.” There’s a quote to that effect somewhere. He had a friend at Oxford who went on about it.

“A real child,” Erik continues. “He’ll have your looks, my mind.”

“But if he has your looks with my mind, where then would we be?”

“Xavier-Lehnsherr has quite a ring to it, or perhaps Xasherr or Lehnvier?”

“How about just Cherik,” Charles says, peevish, and determinedly closes his eyes while Erik continues to muse about pitter patter of tiny feet. 

He’ll get him a kitten with socks, Charles thinks, and then is asleep.

-=-=

A few weeks later....

Charles wakes up with something heavy on his thigh. It begins moving up his torso until the weight sits on his chest.

He opens his eyes to a pair of yellow ones. “Argh,” he says to a solemn furry face staring down at him. It lifts a foreleg and tugs at the bright red and purple striped wool sock on it with its teeth. After a moment, it mews piteously. Erik must already be up, then. Absently, he reaches it up to untie the laces and takes it off. The cat hops off his chest, the awkward pat pat of its steps disappearing out of the door.

It’s snowing outside. Erik’s in the library in front of the fire, studious over a book, twirling two pencils.

“Good morning.” Charles kisses Erik’s cheek. “It’s not very happy with the socks,” he says, after Erik return the kiss on his mouth

“There’s a new stitch that I can try,” Erik says. Charles realises that the pencil is not a pencil at all and a row of bright balls of wool sits beside the couch pillows. “Beside, we need to preserve the furniture.”

The furniture, or Erik’s cashmere turtlenecks. Charles sighs. Erik wouldn’t hear of declawing, which is reasonable. He just isn’t sure if Erik’s solution should be long term. Raven shrieked with laughter the first time she saw what she calls “cat booties.”

“I don’t think it’s the stitching that’s the problem.”

“She’ll get used to them.” Erik flips a page, still concentrating on his book. Charles leans down and sees the glossy pictures. Well, it’s not quite Journal of Advanced Physics, but it’s not the Fortean Times either. At least knitting books trains fine control and perhaps Erik will manage an actual scarf one of these days. 

-=-=


	19. Mutant Husbands AU: Thanksgiving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erik comes face to face with a turkey.

For Thanksgiving, they hired a chef, sous chefs, a pastry chef and goodness knows how many assistants. They have exiled Erik from the kitchen, who can hear and oftentimes feel them banging around from an entire mansion away.

“I can help, you know. I don’t know why Charles doesn’t think I can multi-task cooking,” he tells the kitten currently walking on top of the bookshelf. Intentions to name her had come to nothing; even “Kitty” has been voted out after Kitty Pryde burst into tears when she accidentally walked in on Charles and Erik in midst of a rather…enthusiastic..discussion about what constitutes appropriate response to a cat who gets the sniffles. Expressly: “Not sleeping in the same bed and not getting out seven times a night to check up on her, especially when you insist on no fire at night.”

So the kitten— after all, it’s only still six months— is now “Erik’s cat” and said too quickly, “Erika,” which Erik isn’t sure he likes. He calls her “Cat”.

Cat, as usual, is ignoring him while he grumbled. She’s probably stalking a spider, or a sunbeam, it’s hard to tell. Erik sighed, decided to warp one of Charles’ paperweight into a mouse. A sleek, gray, stainless steel mouse that twitched its nose. Cat’s yellow eye zero in on the movement and does a fantastic leap onto the chandelier, which swings just enough for her to leap onto Charles’ desk in pursuit of the mouse, which turns back into the paperweight.

Cat stares at it for a while, bats it, then looks at Erik, perplexed and accusatory. Erik’s cat, indeed. The expression is all Charles. Erik is flexing his hand again when Cat lets out a yowl and jumps outside the open window.

Erik runs after it, but sees the ginger streak tearing across the garden wall then across the grounds. With a sigh, he puts aside the half-finished plates of cookies and fetches the leather collar laced with metal as well as the small woolen coat. Cat is an indoors cat.

-=-=

He is levitating himself over a mudpool wen he realises that some of the children have come back. Sean’s voice and Scott’s, still reedy, carry the furthest. There’s another slew of sounds that Erik can’t quite decipher, but Cat’s bell seems to be in the middle of it.

“What is that?” Standing in front Cat, who’s hissing, is one of the ugliest creatures Erik has ever seen.

“A turkey,” Scott says.

“What?”

“You know, for Thanksgiving.”

“Dinner,” Sean adds.

“Gobble,” says the turkey.

Erik closes his eyes briefly, then had to open them again when he realises Cat is holding onto his leg, looking up at him and shivering slightly. He bends down and cuddles her against his chest before saying, “Why do we have a live turkey?”

“We bought it.” Raven has come up with a very harried looking Hank. “Charles is never home for Thanksgiving, since he’s been at English schools. Sharon’s usually too drunk, Kurt too busy, and Cain at a party elsewhere, but the cook always manages a turkey. I usually eats it in the kitchen with them.”

“The kitchen has been taken over by…caterers,” Erik points out.

“Yes, well, now we’ll have a real thanksgiving, with people actually sitting at that gigantic dinning table and eating the turkey. Specifically, this turkey.”

“Gobble,” says the turkey, edging away. Erik notices it’s actually on a leash. This is madness. He has nothing against killing livestock for food, but he’s also certain, by the gigantic truck of supplies the caterer drove up in the morning, that they’re not missing a turkey. It is very a very ugly bird, but there’s also the fact that they’re, in fact, leading it toward its death that sits oddly with Erik. Cat in his arm mewls again.

“Does Charles know about this?” He asks. Then, “Who’s going to kill the turkey?” He’s seen their caterers and highly doubt any one of them knows how to pluck a livebird.

The silence to his question is interrupted by Scott. “We were thinking that you might do it since you’re used to killing- What?” The last is addressed to Sean, who has covered his mouth.

“No,” Erik decides. “Charles has forbidden me from having a hand in the feast. In fact, he says, ‘I categorically forbid it’. Also, I’m not plucking…that creature. It looks like half a dinosaur.”

With that, he stalks away, hoping that Charles comes home soon. His errand is taking far too long.

Erik goes back to his study, picks up is reading again, when he hears Charles in his head.

Downstairs, he finds Charles standing next to the hairiest man Erik has ever seen, smoking a cigar.

“Erik! You remember Logan! I sensed he was in the area. Isn’t it great to see him again?” If Logan’s the reason Charles got up at 6am in the morning and left Erik to deal with haughty French chefs and a live turkey, Erik’s feelings in seeing him again is distinctively unpleasant.

Before Erik can reply, Scott ran down the stairs shouting about the turkey and how Erik won’t let them have turkey for dinner. He is followed, more sedately, by Alex, who shares a long-suffering look with Erik. Most of the other students have gone home, but a substantial number of them remain to kick up a raucous at the slightest provocation.

“I thought there’s turkey on the menu,” Charles says, confused, amidst the voices.

“But we’ve a live one! Raven says it’s tradition!”

“Not my tradition,” Erik says. “And there is turkey on the menu. I didn’t take it off. Raven and Hank got into their heads that it’s tradition to slaughter one for dinner. Your old cook did, apparently.”

Logan starts laughing. “And you’re too lily-livered to do it yourself. I’ll do it if Chuck needs my services.” Erik narrows his eyes. There’s a suggestiveness to the tone, and, really, did Charles needs to color like that, that is entirely unnecessary.

Cat, who’s been winding herself around Charles’ legs, at this point, starts slashing at Logan’s legs. Blood seeped through his trousers. Hank ran to get antiseptics.

-=-=

“Erik’s cat,” Erik hears Raven explain later. “Has a bit of a clawing issue, but he’s very clean.”

“Erik’s got a bit of a cat issue, all right,” Logan says, voice low, accepting a cup of warm cider.”So, you’re Chuck’s sister. A tiger yourself, I suppose.”

Well, as long as he knows. Erik goes back to concentrating on the chess game in front of him.

“Admit it, there’s a point to Cat wearing socks.”

“She doesn’t like them,” Charles says absently. “And really, you can knit better things now.”

“You can’t indulge everything and everyone.”

“You mean,” Charles looks up, eyes warm and smile warmer, “I should only indulge you. I did pardon that turkey.”

It’s right before dinner; everyone has been hungry. The turkey still looks ugly, though a little wild-eyed. Apparently Sean had shut it in the barn with the chickens. Charles decides that the headmaster and official face of mutant community should be able to grant amnesty to turkeys even as the president does.

“I missed you this morning,” Erik says, voice low. “Let’s get out and finish what I had planned for dessert.”

“Better than that pumpkin pie?”

Erik nods and stands up. They abandon their game. Erik tugs Cat gently outside their bedroom door in midst of unbuttoning the many layered Charles Xavier.

“Gobble,” says Charles, laughing, as Erik descends on him on their bed.

-=-=


	20. AU: Early 20th Century- Rubato

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erik comes in from the rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rubato.
> 
> (flexible tempo for expressive purposes. Italian: stolen time. Rather, robbing time from one note for another.)

It was, of course, Chopin at first, in this dark corner of the Montmartre district, an awkward virtuoso, shy at the first glance. The hotel was old, the keeper an old woman with four names, as grand and as faded as her establishment. It was raining the first time Erik entered, swept in by the weather only to be caught in another.

It was Paris. Everyone knew how to draw a little, sing a little, play a little, but to manage that mischief- At first, Erik thought it was a stutter in the instrument, then he thought it was merely the player’s responce at the surprising clap of thunder. Upstairs, a woman screamed a little. But then Erik caught the next note, and the next, arced into a phrase that turned the romantic almost contrapuntal, each answer a subtle variation on the subject but never quite the answer- a complication in the form as if preparing for forever.

He sat down on the battered armchair, then caught the gaze eyes beneath the untidy sweep of hair, the bemused smile. Not so shy as he thought, after all.

The world could wait until Erik learns how the melody would end, learns the name of the man at the piano.


	21. Crossover AU: Prometheus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The origin of "Echoe" series.

Charles Xavier, President and CEO of XavierMarko plc, the multinational biotechnology and bioengineering company, is officially reported missing soon after Prometheus’s launch.

He was last seen leaving from Weyland Company headquarters. At the insistence of Raven Xavier, VP of the company and Charles' sister, the company finally released unredacted security footage and video log of Charles last meeting. In the video, Charles is seen arguing with Peter Weyland. Transcripts revealed Charles threatening withdrawal of support for the latest Weyland project.

The “E” series of androids, dubbed “Erik”, has been rumored to be under development with prototypes ready for market testing next Fall.

-=-=

Charles Xavier, looking like roadkill, shows up at Tony Stark’s house in Malibu. 

“I need your help,” he says. “You know I’m a mess with software.” He indicates a bag in his hand and takes out a data cartridge, “This is David 8, as he should’ve been.” 

Tony asks, in conversation, who they used to model David 8 and falls silent to learn that it’s Charles’ Erik.

“My Erik, yes,” Charles laughs hollowly. “Weyland got some his students to work for him. One of them had a crush, or something.”

Tony, for once discreet, does not ask about the “or something.” Erik Lehnsherr has been dead for about decade.

“We fought. He died. I missed him, then he was suddenly everywhere, talking about how he doesn’t have emotions,” Charles said, “and as blond as a lightbulb, which saved my sanity at least. I wanted-” 

JARVIS uploaded the schematics. Another android- but more human, almost entirely organic. It was the Charles’ company but had notes where it differed from David 8, the upgrades and the improvements that would make the resemblance to humans available for customization: the rumored “E” series.

Charles said. “They were even going to name him “Erik”. Coincidence or the same designer? I said no.”

It didn’t explain why he had disappeared.

“There’s something wrong with David 8,” Charles said. “Weyland’s statisticians explained it to me. I had mine check as well, but the decisions were still made by the non-scientific board, who just saw that profit points were greater than..side-effects. Unfortunately, XavierMarko is in a binding contract with Weyland. I shut down the research corridor.”

And Charles absconds with the R&D from his own company.

“I loved Erik. The research on David was our project, our child. I need you to keep it, release it when Weyland start showing some sanity, when the world can actually cope with an android capable of sympathy. It wouldn’t be fair to David, or Erik, otherwise.”

-=-=

In a few decades instead of the original “years”, the promised, more human-like, sympathetic android “E” series were released. People have forgotten the rumor of “Erik” by then. The prototype of the E series is “Echo”.


	22. AU: Incubus!Erik/Demon Hunter!Charles 1/2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erik is an incubus. Charles is a demon hunter. But before then, they were happy and they would be happy again.

It was still raining when Charles got home. He entered the bedroom. The shadowy mass on the bed resolved into a figure, then Erik.

“You are wet,” Erik said, blankets and sheet sliding off of him as he crawled forward. 

Charles ignored him. He withdrew the book containing the vial from his bag, then opened his sock-drawer placed it inside.

“Is that it? May I see it?”

“Yes, and no.” He slammed the drawer shut then threw off his jacket, then his shirt, before he unbuckled his belt and stepped toward the bathroom. Erik made a distressed sound behind him.

“Charles-“

“I smell like wet back alley trash,” Charles informed him. He paused from kicking off his boots, then said, “You’re free to go.”

There was a crack of thunder, then he turned on the shower. As hot as it would go, lukewarm at best these days. He poured a liberal amount of shower soap. Dealing with the Beneath set his nerves on edge. He could still feel slime— the exact contents he preferred not to think about— on his hands. He could swear that his contact copped a feel. There was a shallow red scratch where the claw just missed drawing blood.

“I already paid,” Charles had said, then there were protestations from his contact, an excess of bowing and scraping. “No. We wouldn’t dare. We are honored that you deign to come to us. We are humbled by you, professor.”

But at length, the artifact was produced and it was real, so the payment had not been in vain, though if they knew why Charles had wanted it, perhaps even the entire contents of the Xavier vaults wouldn’t be able to afford the price.

“Are you planning to drown in there?” Erik’s voice. He was still here then.

Charles got out, wrapped a towel around and started putting on his pajamas. The night was fading to dusk outside. In the next moment, he felt Erik’s breath dangerously close to the back of his neck.

“How do you want me?” Erik whispered, sliding his gloved hands up Charles’ back. “Not much to look at these days, but-“

“I said you’re free to go.” Charles turned carefully, finished buttoning up his shirt. Erik, as ever, was meticulously clothed, though Charles body still felt the pull toward his skin- the arch of his cheekbones, the line of his neck, the hollow space between his collarbones inappropriately erotic. “No one will hurt you now. No one can hurt you.”

“Except for you.”

“I’d say it’s mutual.” The yearning was becoming intolerable, but so too,was the tremble in Erik’s hands, the pallor of his cheeks Charles knew was there though he could not see it. Charles brought Erik’s hands up where they were circling his hip. The thinnest silk would never be enough. Not enough, either, when there was no end of what should be just games. He kissed a clothed knuckle, tasting leather. “Go, Erik.”

In the darkness of the bedroom- they never changed the lightbulb— Charles couldn’t see if there were tears in Erik’s eyes as there were in his own.

Charles went to bed alone. It was still warm. Even if the scent was gone, the shape was the same, a memory imprinted their bed. They had been thinking about getting a new mattress, new pillows. Now Charles closed his eyes and the creak of bad springs comforted him.

It was Tuesday already. Erik had no meetings in the morning and seminars to lead in the afternoon, which meant Charles could wake wrapped around him, warm against each other, skin against skin. 

-=-=

The noon was long gone by the time Charles made his way downstairs. The kitchen was still meticulously clean. The waffle-iron would never work as well as before, or the kettle. They had been lazy about getting those replaced when Erik was around and heated metal with a touch.

Now Erik was gone. 

Impatient, Charles made bad coffee, took a packet of biscuits, and retreated into the study.

Unable to go outside, Erik had shelved all their books, by genre, then by chronology. Their study had never been so tidy, nor so disreputable.

Instead of the latest development of mutant genetics research, Charles’ sabbatical was occupied by medieval quacks, mystics, followers of the occult, and conspiracy theorists. As if ashamed of the presence of those books, Erik had put them in an awkward low shelf by Charles’ desk.

Bookmarks and documentations of the actual supernatural had been taken off of the corkboard and placed first in real folders, then in flashdrives. None of them wanted the reminder once they realised that the possibilities of a world-class scientist with extremely powerful telepathy had never occurred to anyone, possibly because such a person had never existed before Charles.

Magic, after all, was merely understanding and even as a scientist strives toward new knowledge, a telepath could know all that is known, if he cared.

And Charles cared for Erik, promised for better and for worse, in health and sickness, as long as they both shall live.

-=-=

When he found Erik, Erik was already beyond the touch of his mind.

“What happened?” he had asked, approaching slowly. That was Erik’s face, that was his body. Where was his mind? Charles had the faintest impression as if Erik was fifty thousand miles away instead of five steps.

“Quantum mechanics,” Erik replied, wry. He could still smile then, with more curiosity than bitterness. “It seems my atoms had been rearranged.”

“To what, exactly?”

Erik shrugged. “Something demonic, apparently.”

Demonic was an epithet frightened people used for mutants in history.

“Demonic” shouldn’t exist in the 21st century when blue-skinned children sat in classrooms with their warmer-hued cousins. Demonic certainly should not be the battlecry of those who wanted Erik dead; nonetheless, Charles could read their thoughts even if he could no longer Erik’s.

Charles thought it was a virus. If it had been anyone else, he would’ve advocated some good old fashioned benchwork research. He knew prominent scientists in virology, pathology…

But it was Erik and Charles wanted the feel of his mind back, the feel of his hand. The scientific process could never be applied to their relations with each other. “Come home with me,” Charles had invited Erik within the first five minutes of their meeting; Erik had no other lover before Charles.

“Stay away. Don’t touch the demon,” had been the first injunction against those who feared infection. Suddenly Charles was being pushed back by a strong hand. “KEEP BACK.”

“I want to touch him,” Charles had said, though even then he thought the frisson of warmth travelling through him unnatural as it usually occurred without an audience, when both of them were in the mood. Standing in the freezing air in a dilapidated part of an old European city, it was rather inexplicable.

“That’s what the demons do. Then you’ll die,” said that stranger. He turned back to Erik. “You dirty-“

Charles had rather feared for the man. A rough childhood and a rather belligerent adolescence in combination of Erik’s natural abilities had honed some very quick and potentially lethal defensive techniques, and they were surrounded by metal. Erik stretched out his hand.

The puzzled expression on his face wasn’t reassuring, especially then Charles saw the gun being upholstered by the man in front of him. Rather hastily, issued a mental command. The man crumpled.

“What now?” Erik had asked, staring at his hands, betrayed. “I can’t feel it. Nothing.” He said, half a whisper.

“Now we figure it out,” Charles said, slowly drawing memories out of the unconscious- hunter?

“All right,” Erik had answered, amiable enough then.

They took an early flight home.

-=-=

Telepathy, for its lack of use in practical matters, did wonders on librarians.

A position as a visiting scholar at an Oxford University, a pair of blue eyes, and a nice smile also helped, much to Erik’s displeasure, when he could still watch Charles flirt and though of only Charles.

Though Charles wondered, later on, if even then Erik’s eyes and his mind wondered, imagined someone else in his arms. 

Six months without skin contact was, well, interesting, but also straining their creativity. When Erik said that he wouldn’t mind if Charles found someone else, even then Charles knew he was lying.

Erik had never been able to sleep without nightmares before meeting Charles. His apartment had been mostly ceramic and plastic. In hushed whispers, Erik had confessed that he suspected he was responsible for giving his university roommate a heart-condition by pulling on the iron of their blood. Without Erik’s mind, Charles’ mind roamed without a center, always half a step from losing himself entirely.

Charles could live with the game unending. It was nothing, he thought, compared to couples living with long-term illneses or those confronted with sudden disabilities. Like all survivors, they would adapt. Then he found what Erik was.

He would’ve laughed, if Erik was not starving before his eyes, if Charles did not have the ability to stop it. Or at least, by silence, condone what would allow his husband to live.

Erik, frowning at the name, repeated: “Incubus? So I should be able to survive on…sexual excitement?”

“Orgasms,” Charles said, didactic so he did not think of the implications. “Little death, with the possibility of the larger one for the partner, or the partners.”

“How certain are you?”

“Seventy?”

Erik smiled. “That’s almost a failing grade, Mr. Xavier.”

They didn’t talk much more of it after that, but neither did Erik question Charles’ activities past midnight.

-=-=

The Beneath feared him. Charles found them because there were hunters after Erik and creatures of the Beneath hated hunters and the hunters hated them, though not of all of them were “demons”. The enemy of my enemy was a friend- or at least, an ally.

Erik couldn’t stay in the apartment forever. Hunters hunted by day and by night and Charles’ mercy had spared the man who knew of Erik’s existence.

“What are they? Morlocks?” Erik had asked.

Morlocks then, was what Charles call them, though they themselves were secretive about their names. They looked neither human nor mutant, though human enough that Charles telepathy worked on them.

The Professor, as Charles became known to them, could read and command minds. Some ancient fear lingered at their back of their minds when dealing with Charles, mingled with a disturbing sense of awe. Perhaps some toga-wearing telepath had commanded them once and left an ancestral memory, carried in their genes. 

They wanted hunters gone from their territories, so Charles erased their memories of hunting, let them go back to their families and let their cover stories become their real lives.

In return, the Morlocks guarded his residence. Guarded Erik as if he was Charles’ prisoner and traded Charles all the weapons that could kill or harm an incubus.

-=-=

“Go,” Charles had said and was not so cruel as to offer the impossibility of a kiss.

Erik went.

Charles did not wish to know where Erik went. How he fed. As long as he should live.

Erik didn’t come back that night, nor the night after. It was a week without Erik, then a month.

Charles mourned him as if he were dead. Distracted as ever without Erik’s mind, no matter how faint, to anchor him, Charles found himself wandering their old haunts alone.

Once, he thought he saw Erik’s profile, head thrown back in laughter. A beautiful woman sat in front of him outside of a cafe.

Jealous burned through him, but he walked on. He didn’t notice the group of hunters until they were already too close. Charles sent them away with a thought drilled through their minds. Someone had noticed.

Lurking in the alleys, the Morlock noticed. The Professor was back. He missed his Erik- not a prisoner at all, then.

And afterwards, Charles knew everywhere Erik went. A letter in his mailbox, a note slipped underneath his door- always in awful handwriting and smelling of rotten fruit, Charles recognized the service as well as the mixture of threat and plea. 

How a king must feel, he thought.

-=-=

“Saturday 2am. The Grand. Room 432.”

Around 3am on Saturday, Charles gave in and checked into the Grand, Room 430, and experienced his first death at Erik’s hand.

The paramedics were swarming through the corridor when he slipped through them to go home where no one waited for him.

“Tell him to come back,” he said to the photographs on the mantelpiece, the empty chair across from him. “Come back.”

-=-=


	23. AU: Incubus!Erik/Demon Hunter!Charles 2/2

Charles was not gone, only that Erik could not return.

He had sat at the bar, as he had seen others do. A girl winked at him. He brought her a drink. She came closer, glance falling to his hand, frowning a little before smiling again.

The wedding band was a discreet silver, but Erik wished he had slipped it off. He wished that he could sense the minute words etched on the inside.

Her hand was on his legs, sliding toward his zipper. It shouldn’t do anything for him. Boyishly slender or not, she was still not-

It was merely easier, that was all. Pick up a woman, let a man pick you. Let a boy. Charles picked him, didn’t he? So it worked for how well that turned out. Sixteen and mortified, half-drowned in rain and rage and helplessness. His mutation too strange, his accent too odd, and his indignities all too visibly felt- in the railings on the buildings, in the pipes in the walls. Then Charles coming running up with an umbrella, calling his name in his head like Erik was light and life and hope.

Charles had been fifteen, half-child half-angel and Erik adored him. A year in that ancient house, and then fifteen years of certainty that he would have no one but Charles and Charles would choose him above anything, at the end. He promised Erik would not be alone, in a voice more resolute than iron, telepaths did not promise lightly when all they knew of men were their whims and vacillations. Even Erik.

The pole was lost. Sky had fallen to night, black without stars and he had no compass. Erik set adrift, smiled at her at the bar. It didn’t take much. It galled him how much he wanted her, that her excitement excited him.

“Where can we go?” she whispered in his ear. “Where’s your place?”

Erik’s place was home but he couldn’t go there. In fact, he was quite certain these sort of encounters should only took place on the more indiscriminate section of Craiglist. He wondered if an incubus could get sick, a secondary infection that would aggravate his mortality. Charles did not say it aloud, but now Erik had no gift but death.

He had taken too long to reply. “I’ve a place” she whispered hotly in his ear, and he was in a cab, then in a strange woman’s room, watching someone he didn’t care about taking their clothes off. He was lust and embarrassment at once. Only Charles had seen him naked for the last-

“I’m going to kill her,” he thought, startled by her squeal of delight when she took off his underwear. The oddest thoughts came to him: four months ago, he bent metal to his will, sometimes bent students to his will, and occasionally succeeded in bending Charles to his will.

It hurt to think of him, to think of them. They have nothing together except legalities: a house under their name, a bank account in their name, insurance under their name- He hoped that Charles called someone to fix the water heater. It had been making alarming sounds. He had been meaning to fix it before-

Erik drew away. Left. He was a disappointment. Well, he could live with it. Else, he must be a different man.

Move to Manhattan. Change his name. Flirt with women and men and as they flock together they would just be bodies to him as he was just also a body. A miserable body, envious of even the air next to Charles’.

But Charles had let him go to live, so live he must.

The next time, it went more easily. His perverted powers left the woman breathing in her bed. He dreaded her waking up- insane or dying or worse, unaffected. He took a shower, left breakfast on the counter, and walked to wait for the earliest train.

He rented a studio apartment in a chic district, dreading disease, dreading hunger, dreading the cold, dreading being alone. In the most crowded city in America, he felt like ten thousand years of civilization had abandoned him, reduced him to the primitive man.

He wanted, very badly, to go home, except he would die before he harmed Charles and he would not bear to see Charles watch him die. 

And there was this- how could he go home as a murderer?

-=-=

They die, eventually, every single one- they linger a week at most. Erik hadn’t wanted to know, but he knew, for he grew fit again. At least, fit as a human, an incubus performing the most mundane painstaking tasks: he must remember where he put his keys and remember them when leaving the house. Metal had abandoned him. 

Charles had suspected a virus at first, perhaps affecting them both- since his telepathy was so muted toward his Erik. In the end, he threw up his hands: biological research was always slow going.

“How much time do we have?” Charles had asked him, expression bleak.

Erik shrugged. He was already avoiding looking into the mirror. His features had lost whatever roundness they had, the edge of his smile, always rather sharp, could cut.

Charles said: “There must be a cure. There’s no such thing as an incubus. It’s all just superstition and-” He paused, staring at Erik. “The devil does not exist. Demons do not exist.”

“There’s a whole group of people willing to prove you wrong,” Erik pointed out. “Then there are your Morlocks.”

“Scaptegoating and extermination of the strange and threatening and considering people inhuman had always allowed the majority to get away from murder,” Charles muttered quietly.

“You have to admit that I could kill. And for all you know, those other demons which you purport to hunt and one of which, incidentally, might’ve killed you had you not-“

Charles had thirteen stitches on his arm and a broken wrist. Still he said, mildly, “A drowning man might break the nose of his rescuer. A child might scream and shout against swallowing medicine.”

Erik shook his head. He had nothing more to say. He took care of Charles- made sure that he ate and slept properly and remained always himself. He was failing on every count.

Charles, when Erik left him, was thin and grim, arms sinewy with muscle and lined with scars. He had cut his hair short so that Erik would not accidentally brush against it. He resembled a tattered angel who had fought, and lost.

Erik was to become evil. Free to become so without worry, because Charles would be his only hunter.

-=-=

This state of existence could not last long, Erik had thought at first, though he would certainly live, because some part of him still hoped that Charles was right and that his body would fight off this infection, or condition, whatever it was.

More, if he should die, he should die at least somewhere where the most powerful telepath in the world could not be affected.

When he woke up to the smell of sour milk and old newspapers, a flashlight shone into his face, he was temporarily blinded.

“Who are you?”

“You are the Professor’s incubus?”

Erik had been sweetheart, darling, lover, and husband, and sometimes even Mr. Xavier to much amusement.

The Morlock lowered his voice, “Professor Charles Xavier’s incubus.”

“I’m Erik Lehnsherr.”

“Good enough,” the Morlock declared. “We’ve to ask you a favor.” The flashlight moved toward its own face, then others around him, all like grotesques, or gargoyles made alive.

“What are you?” Erik cried out.

“We are the hunted. We come to tell you the professor has asked for you to go back.”

“No.”

“Not a choice, I’m afraid.”

“He doesn’t want me back.”

“He does. He says so. We tell him where you are. He follows you. “

Erik went cold. He didn’t have a chance to ask anymore. Before he questioned the sterility of the needle one of them was brandishing, all was dark.

-=-=

When he woke up again. He woke up to Charles, staring hollow-eyed at him and wearing an old cardigan that was ratty at the wrists. Erik turned his face away and started dampening the lumpy pillows with relief. The springs creaked as he felt a weight behind him.

“Erik, Erik,” Charles was saying, stroking his back, a smooth movement from neck to spine and Erik could feel that infernal lust, too seldom tamped in these days,

“Charles, go away.”

The weight shifted. Erik didn’t move, but he opened his eyes and saw their bedroom as he had left it. Dawn was filtering through the windows, lighting the dustmotes on Erik’s side of the bed. His tablet was still on the bedside table.

When he felt Charles’ weight lying across of him, he didn’t dare to move, then a gloved hand touched his face. “I missed you so much.”

“I missed me, too,” Erik said quietly.

“It doesn’t matter,” Charles murmured. “I don’t mind.”

“Poor Charles,” Erik thought and was viciously glad of it. Then it occurred ot him: “You told me your Morlocks to kidnap me.”

“They’re not mine.”

“They seem very sympathetic to you.”

“They like that I keep the hunters away from them.” Erik had no telepathy, but he knew Charles’ evasions.

Erik turned around and sat up. “What are they anyways? Mutants? If they’re mutants. What are hunters? Human supremacist groups?”

“The Morlocks are afraid of Mr. Sinister. They’ve asked me to help them.”

“To what?”

“Kill him.” Charles said. “I think the hunters have a cure. The Morlocks call themselves the hunted, but not all of them are demons and not all of them are actually targets for hunters. Do you see the paradox?”

“My life is a paradox,” Erik said. “It’s also a dilemma.” He became aware, very suddenly, how close Charles was to him, how much he missed him, the touch of him, which was all the trouble.

“Go shower,” Charles said suddenly. “I’ll join you.”

Then naked, with Charles behind him, his clothes rough against his skin, his breathing harsh, and his finger only slightly more gentle inside of him, Erik wept against the bathroom tile and it seemed like the whole house wept with him.

-=-=

They took the tangled path to find Mr. Sinister. Charles decided to march in the door, unarmed.

“An incubus in our midst,” said Schmidt, attention on Erik, apparently unconcerned. The man next to him must be Sinister except Charles gave out a startled cry.

“Nathan!”

Nathan raised an eyebrow. “We’ve heard about your incubus, Professor. No one told me it’s Charles..and Dr. Lehnsherr, is it? I am very sorry for your..condition. It’s unexpected. You are not intended and bad help happens more often than good help.”

Erik had seen Nathan exactly once at a gala he had accompanied.

“You sent hunters to kill me,” he said. “Humans, mutants.”

Nathan grimaced. “Incubus is very rare result. They are historically considered demons, very dangerous and very very mindless, unless they happen to be married to a telepath.”

“You are saying my telepathy kept Erik intact.”

“I’m saying you made Erik into an incubus, Charles,” Nathan said, calmly. “Well between you and his own genetics, though I must ask, how did you come upon the mutates?”

“Mutates?”

“Before we took over, this place was a thousand year old institution of mutant suppression. Mutants have always existed and they were considered supernatural, creatures from the other world, evil. The hunted. _We_ have been hunted through history, until-“

“Tell me about the mutates. Are they your failed experiments?”

Essex laughed. “You could say that. Biological organisms, as you know, become hard to control once out of controlled environment They take on different forms. They mutate. Whatever accelerated the mutant evolution among humans also accelerated those..mutates, result of ancient experiments of poison and alchemy. Failed experiments, if you like, of my predecessors, but they are not human, Charles. The hope, as much as I could gather, was that they’re to provide service to their masters. A slave race, if you will.”

“Liar,” said Charles calmly, and raised his hand to his temple. Charles took the antidote from one of the books as Nathan and Schimdt stared at him, seemingly bewildered and unable to move. “Do you think telepathy work on animals? Plants? Do you think I don’t put every piece of weapon to kill an incubus under a microscope, through a spectrometer? That I’ll be in awe of your tales of the supernatural only because I don’t understand everything?

“The mutates have always been here, driven into the shadows by your hunters, but it’s you who choose and make the demons, feeding an obsolete tradition by fear, commanding who to be killed.”

And Erik, in the wrong place at the wrong time. The lock on the door groaned, then shuddered. The Morlocks had broken through and Charles must be exhausting himself. The Morlocks will have their revenge. The hunters would be without means. 

“Let’s go home, Charles.”

-=-=


	24. Mutant Husbands AU: Open House Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's something odd about those two, Moira thought.

They dressed the part— Erik in polo-shirt, pleated khaki pants and Charles in blue sweater and gray suit trousers, both looking a bit harried— but still reminded her of assassins (expensive ones) or spies (definitely European) lying low, except Lorna was loudly telling everyone that her fathers helped her make all the cupcakes. The cupcakes were red-velvet with purple frosting.

Perhaps they’re cupcake spies, thought Moira, then shook her head. Civilian life definitely wasn’t agreeing with her. However, she suspected, judging by what looked like laser etched lettering of her name and classroom number on the cupcakes, it wasn’t agreeing with Lehnsherr or Xavier, or both of them either.


	25. Bear Sanctuary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles meets Erik at the bear sanctuary he operates.

“Don’t feed the bears.” He was certain that kid just threw a bit of a pretzel.

“Why?”

“Because it’s dangerous.”

“Why?”

“Because then they get used to human food and that’s not healthy.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re known for our good tastes.”

The kid obviously had more questions, but as long as he was asking them, then he wasn’t feeding, taunting, or shouting at the bears. Erik’s patience always had good reasons. They work in inverse proportion to his temper, which he expressed strongly and at length but at the appropriate volume when a man— well, what might be passing at a man anyways, they usually aren’t that youthful or distractingly handsome— came running up to the kid, the wash of relief so obvious that he was still smiling sunnily at Erik after Erik described all bear-related accidents to 1980 due to irresponsible, and frankly, stupid people.

“Why are you smiling?” he asked, becoming disconcerted that the kid was straining at the leash, metaphorically speaking, and was now cooing at the pigeons amidst wines of “Charles, Charles, I want to see the tigers.”

“You are very good looking.”

“What?”

“I make a habit of being around intelligent people.”

“What?”

“And people who care for animals.”

If Erik had more concern for people, he would be wondering heatstroke. Erik frowned as Charles licked his lips. “What do you say to-“

At that point, Kurt ran off, but Charles was still there.

“Aren’t you going to chase after him?” In fact, it Charles didn’t, Erik was. A kid should’t be wandering in the corridors of care centers of bear sanctuaries.

“He’s just going to find his mother. Raven’s office is just around the corner. She promised him to take him to see the tigers.”

“And you are Charles Xavier,” Erik said, awful realizing dawning.

Charles’ smile, and his eyes, if it were possible to brighten further were doing it nevertheless. “My reputation precedes me.”

“Mostly about your studies on the genetics of mating-” Erik stopped, and, unconscionably, blushed. The sleeping baby cub in his arm hiccuped.

“My most recent research have been on lions,” Charles said, smiling like a cat who got the cream. “But I’m looking forward to expand my horizons.”


	26. AU: King Magneto Under Influence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To the outside, it's King Magneto who rules Genosha.
> 
> But Erik has been alone for a long time and Charles is unique.
> 
> Dub-con warnings.

“Doesn’t Magneto dance?” she was very young for an attache, and clearly didn’t read her briefs.

“He does not, Miss Salvatore.”

“Not even with his husband?”

“No, not even him.” Charles smiled, “but it does give me the pleasure of dancing with you.” He leaned into her ear, whispered a joke, a flattery- what did it matter— she was glowing in his arms and from his seat on the dais, Erik hadn’t even looked his way.

 _She likes me_ he told Erik silently. _Her father’s Secretary of Defense. Sit straight, my love, sip the wine slowly. You are my stern husband._

Charles ignored the unaccustomed heaviness of his watch as he whirled Angel— that was the girl’s name — on the dancefloor.

-=-=

Magneto, King of Genosha, Erik Lehnsherr in front of the fire, hadn’t planned on marrying Charles Xavier, ambassador of the United Western States.

It was suppose to be a week of secret negotiations with cars switched in discreet garages, conversations in undisclosed locations with drawn curtains— Genosha was a country of powerful mutants, the states wished for an alliance more than it desired war. It had sent Professor Charles Francis Xavier, low-level empath, scientist, and the emerging darling of human-mutant politics.

“Be careful,” Emma warned him, but she shielded his mind and Magneto had the helmet.

Then Charles Xavier licked his lips, fed himself a strawberry in a discreet corner of the room where he had loosened his tie, his collar, and his face was a marvel.

Magneto came to manhood during a war. He had never seen a sapphire, a ruby, or ivory until he sat on a throne made of them, and then they had seemed pointless. But Charles Xavier, a glance through lowered lashes, half-defiant, half-embarassed, suddenly Magneto remembered hunger, deprivation, cold- and the end in sight. A fire licked up his limbs.

Erik Lehnsherr took his helmet off in order to go to bed with Charles Xavier. It was not a difficult choice.

The next morning, he saw Charles’ bright blue eyes above him beneath a tumble of artful brown curls. Erik cupped the sleep-flushed face and nipped slightly the very red lips.

“Would you let me? In the interest of a fair negotiation,” Charles said, his unexpectedly strong hands on Erk’s bare shoulders. He dangled a silk tie in front of Erik. Erik sighed indulgently.

He turned around, felt the fabric falling around his face and fell- into nothing.

It was as if someone had turned an off the world. He continued to fall He opened his eyes, but everything was black. He cried but no sound came from his throat. He reached for metal, but they were all gone. Dark. Silent. Still. Then there was a sensation, very much like sex. He realised dimly that he was being penetrated, repeatedly, while he felt like he was drowning on nothingness and in a perpetual vertical drop. He shoved back, somehow his limbs finding purchase in the act, his heart beating faster hearing a groan that seemed to echo in the vast space around him. Each thrust into him hurt a little and each of his impossible motion made it slightly worse, but he was somewhere, he was not alone. 

He didn’t know how long it went on for, only that he wanted to cry and was surely crying,only that it began to be painful, and he was surely bleeding. Then it ended, as suddenly as it had begun.

Charles’ bright blue eyes against white sheet and the glow of Genosha sun shining through the curtains. The world had returned.

“You were lovely,” he said to Erik, who was panting against the pillow, his heart racing. Fight, flight, fear and excitement coursed through his body, manifested with adrenaline and endorphin and God knows what else-

“Oxytocin,” supplied Charles, then kissed him, quite tenderly.

Erik groaned. He was still hard. Charles reached for him. “Mine.”

It put rather an end to negotiations.

-=-=


	27. AU: Merchants on the Silk Road

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The beginning of a long journey.

“There’s a new king in Petra,” announced Charles as he rode in beside the caravan, the horsebells jingling merrily.

Erik had never seen him dismount while on the road. As far as he knew, Charles might’ve been born on the animal. When he mentioned it, Raven had laughed. Charles was Roman, she divulged, whom Erik knew rode badly. So Charles _had_ been Roman, now he was only Charles, head of X-Men, men of the world soul, or nowhere, depending on how much Charles had drunk. For a fee, they protected the caravansaries crossing parts of Egypt and Parthian territories to the seaports.

For Erik, their service was free. Charles had a stakeholder’s interest.

“Rumors has it that his collector is going to increase the taxes again.”

Erik considered. “Then we won’t go there.”

“Where will we go then, my friend?”

It was a gratifying question. Erik had been half-afraid that Charles would leave him. Charles, who must have ran as far as Erik did. He was not made to fight bandits under the sun, or compose Greek verse to men who did not know Aristophanes from Archilaus just as Erik was not made to be a seller of silk and luxuries to Roman nobility who had thirsted for his blood in the arena.

“I have news, too,” he said. “That man has a ship. He is to sail to Muziris.”

That man did not need a name. Charles had even buried tablets for Erik’s sake, but now Erik was asking him to go to sea and leave all he had built behind. It would be a year’s journey, even if they would return. Erik must go. He would have his answers; and if not, revenge.

“Then we must go as well.” The steel in Charles’ words was with him.


	28. Canon: Teddy Bears

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erik finds Charles' collection of teddy bears.
> 
> Prompt reply.

When Erik saw the rows of teddy bears sitting inside the glass cases, the whole scene struck him as somewhat sinister, out of place in a room painted in pastels and decorated with lace.

“This is the nursery,” Raven told him. “At least, it was, then Charles grew up. I lived in here for a while.”

Erik’s eyes caught on the bears again. Rather, a specific one. It seemed familiar, but the nose seemed too dark, the fur too brushed.  
He didn’t mean to bring it up again except Charles was piled sleepily atop of him while in the television, a low British voice went on about bears fishing, bears climbing, bears hibernating.

“I like bears,” Charles said.

“I saw the collection,” Erik said.

“My grandfather hunted them, apparently.” Charles said. “My father brought back a toy version after every trip abroad.”

There was a whole cabinet of bears, so Erik said nothing, but merely kissed the top of Charles’ head.

He had seen Charles’ flat at Oxford; there were no personal photographs. He slept in Charles’ room in Westchester; the ancient woods were spotless; the drawers contained old stationery. Despite the clutter of books and pens, despite the evident affection in the glance, the smile, for the first time Erik wondered if Charles Erik was good at uncovering secrets; he roamed the mansion, but Charles had no old letters, no keepsakes. There are no childish treasures buried in the grounds. The bears were behind the glass- yet Charles spoke as if he loved his father.

He went back there again to the nursery. It was still early, the house still quiet. He stared at the collection: all the shades of gray and brown, eyes of glass, of plastic, of embroidery, clothed in waistcoat or naked except for their fur- they were just toys.

He didn’t realise he wasn’t alone until he saw a mop of unruly hair coming through the door. “You’re crying,” Charles said, all concern. “Do you want one?”

Erik did. Specifically, he wanted the one he had, a long time ago, when he was only a boy. He was too old for toys by the time it had been laid aside, but he remembered the moment; he was growing too old for childish things, he remembered thinking.

Charles’ eyes were brighter than sea-glass. “If I leave,” Erik said, “if I had left, would you miss me?”

“But you’re not leaving,” Charles said, but he went to the cabinet and took out the bear that perhaps had sat on the same shelf where Erik’s father bought his. “And if you do, you can take it with you.” He pushed the thirty year old antique bear, absurdly, toward Erik’s chest, as if Erik’s a child, to be offered whatever he wanted. No; Erik realised, his hand broad enough to span the entire head of the toy, Charles was giving it to him, Erik, as if he could offer Erik's childhood back if he could.


	29. Mutant Husbands AU: A Kitten and a Puppy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are strays on the doorstep.

The kitten, Erik supposed, was cute. The puppy, he was more hesitant about, until Charles looked up at him and the similarity struck him as being possibly unfair and possibly a conspiracy.

After all, who would steal through spiked iron gates, cross a large tract of uphill land, and brave an unpaved pebble path in the middle of the night only to leave a basket of two baby animals, on the only day of the week when Charles open the front doors of the mansion earlier than Erik?

It was a husky, of course it was a husky, with thick fur that made it look round and resemble more of a stuffed animal than a prospective working dog. The kitten was very small and active, but the husky seemed rather content to let it loll on its back under a piece of sunshine in what had been a morning room once upon a time. Erik thought the animals could be only decorative.

“You’re decorative, too,” Charles said, as he bent down to fuss at the blankets and the bowls of water, “especially when you stand in front of a 18th century mirror in the morning sun.”

“I earn my keep,” Erik said.

Charles raised an eyebrow, but soon his expression turned rather indecent. He threw back his head, exposing a dark bruise on his throat, near the shoulder, the exact spot where Erik had worried with his mouth last night.”Indeed.”

Erik flushed. “I don’t know what you’re implying. I just edited and retyped the draft of the bill you’re taking to congress next week.”

“No, I don’t know either,” Charles said, quite innocent. “I like you being decorative. I do, however, prefer you working.” He stood, dusted the knees of his trousers. “How did you put it? At the service of all mutant kind. I’ll be gone for a week,” he pointed out.

There was a gleam in his eye as he walked forwards that made Erik feel rather warm. “Not in front of the kitten, Charles,” he said. “And the puppy,” he added. Then he unlocked the room as they ran back to the bedroom. 

He tried, afterwards, to ignore the surprised and delighted squeals of the children filtering through the walls as Erik showed Charles how much he was missing out with a merely “decorative” appreciation.


	30. AU: Rome

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raven gives her brother an unexpected gift.

C. Franciscus Xavier was prone to sadness during the ides. This his sister Raven,who had been named after the ships that brought Rome her greatest naval victory, observed to her consternation. After counting the money of her private account, she arranged to purchase the greatest gladiators of Rome for a night. She bought two, to allay suspicions-one who had recently arrived in the city whom the people called the Beast,and the other Magnus, the champion. Magnus Gladius, in both senses, which Raven learned from rumors and would like to know herself once her brother finished.

Caius could be exhausting, especially when he started talking. Raven instructed for his wine to be cut less that night.

She did not expect to see them, fully-clothed staring at each other with tears on their faces when she spied on them.


	31. AU: The Tempest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erik landed on an deserted island with Lorna and finds Charles

Erik had not meant to capture Charles. No, he did. He sensed him before he saw him but then he lost concentration, the bottom of the boat hit the rocky shore and Lorna had woken up and cried.

The boat’s meager stores had been exhausted two days ago; they had been caught becalmed. He could fish, but he had no milk, not even freshwater for her. So desperate, he took whatever he could from the lush green and life of the island before him. How should he had know how easily Charles yielded to a hungry infant, and being, lonely, to another voice. It was not Erik’s fault.

Lorna now, sleeping in a room of saltrock on a bed of down and woven leaves, was nearly nineteen and Erik, eighteen years older, still repeated to himself that it was not his fault. His back was cold; the other side of the bed had long cooled. 

He hoped Charles had not gone to see Onslaught. Erik had not wished to give _it_ a name, but Charles insisted and the word tormented him with every use. Onslaught was an abomination, Magneto’s heir, and a reminder to Erik forever that Charles would leave him if he could. 

After all, what else do you do to the man who forced you into his house, his service, his bed and bear his child-

Lorna found the child first, lying in heather and rush. She thought of him as a pet, a brother. She could not know he was, in part, but Charles was invisible to her while Onslaught was not. His eyes was that same iridescent blue. his lips that rose red, but made more vivid and monstrously beautiful in their son, a child who never smiled, as if he seemed to know bitterness and sadness from the first day.

“I am so happy to see you, my friend,” Charles whispered by his ear. 

“Are you?” Erik asked, climbing up the hill, Magneto’s helmet firmly in his hand. 

“I always am, my friend,” Charles answered, and Erik did not wish to know if it was mockery. It was a lovely day. He wished he had not bought the helmet.

“Are you going to visit Onslaught today?”


	32. AU: Changeling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles had always known that he did not belong, but he tried. 
> 
> For [this gifset](http://motleypatches.tumblr.com/post/47567467664/changeling-he-had-been-a-child-his-new-father)

He had been a child. His new father did not love him. His new brother loathed him. His mother was forgetting him. His telepathy had reached out and found the truth. But Charles had said no- the idea too strange and too awful.

He didn’t see any one of _Them_ again for over twenty years.

“Do you find a mortal life so satisfying?”

His knee was throbbing from the chase. Everyone else had fallen behind. He was alone.

“Come away with us.” The voice echoed inside his head,sweet and low, like a burbling stream, though the speaker wore armor and they stood far away from any vestige of nature. “There’s nothing for you here. The world does not tolerate us. We frighten them.”

Erik had said much the same when Charles had met him, when the mutant rights movement were still in its infancy. But humans and mutants were the same species, whereas They were not.

“Why do you hesitate? We know you are sad.The world and men have not been kind to you”

Perhaps Erik was waiting for him back in the apartment. Perhaps he was no longer angry and had returned. Perhaps he missed him or even dreamed of him. Charles did.

As a boy, he had been offered a knife. He wondered what Erik thought of the metal on the blade

“Sever the bond. Time will heal all wounds.”

Charles was no longer a boy. The number of his regrets had grown even as his power did and with them, the yearning for a peace he couldn’t articulate, not even to Erik, whose anger had been almost familiar at first. Charles could make himself forget, afterwards. He could. Steal away their memories and be happier in the forgetting-

His thoughts did not affect Them, though they could still affect others and influence his- a certain kind of telepathy. A spell. And the realization cleared away the cobweb of his thoughts. 

“What have you taken?” he shouted, gun still raised. “Give him back.”


	33. NSFW: Agent/Agent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt reply: Charles works for some alphabet name agency (CIA/SWAT/NSA/NSFW (lol sorry couldn’t resist)) and has to work with Mossad Agent!Erik.

“You won’t like him,” Emma informed Charles.

Charles, determined, walked up to the man to the man with sharp cheekbones in the sharp suit and encountered a sharper smile.

The teeth, at least, looked the normal omnivore types. Charles could peruse them all, should he choose. However, he preferred the pleasure of the face as a whole. Perhaps even the man.

Minds- Well, he preferred the game.

“Erik Lehnsherr, I presume. Mossad?”

“You presume, Charles Xavier” Erik said. “It’s a habit here, I’ve discovered.”

“Along with the awful coffee.” Erik’s hand clutched the cup like a lifeline. Charles let his gaze fall, noted the long fingers, before looking up.

“Interagency efforts never go quite smoothly.” 

“Swift action would make difficulties easier to bear.” Erik chugged the coffee, grimaced, and threw the cup in the trash.

Azazel appeared, delivered his report, then disappeared. 4 o’clock in the morning tended to give him the aspect of the devil and the tone of a caustic Sunday school teacher. New fatherhood wore on the man. Brother in law or not, Charles rallied for his new target rather than the well-being of his new nephew. One had the benefit of a doting mother, the other, Charles presumed, did not. A mother would’ve gave him a habit to dress in blue or gray instead of dark purple turtlenecks.

They did presume much in this office, but that’s because they were always right. Officially a division of the intelligence services of the interpol, Charles told neighbors his job description merited NSFW and let the imaginations ran. However, he was quite proud of the wombats pictures from the kindergartners next door.

Charles Xavier had very little pleasures in life. Thus, he took pleasures in the little things.

Erik Lehnsherr had an astonishing profile, an attractive figure, a laconic tendency and possibly a brilliant mind.

You won’t like him, indeed, thought Charles. He smiled sweetly at Emma through the frosted glass and went to pursue Erik.

Waiting was the hard part. Erik Lehnsherr had been pacing up and down since they had the wombat located, so to speak.

“Gun range?”

Charles felt his heart skip a beat by the flash of anger. 

“We’ll hold him. There’s no need to worry. You won’t miss the strike.”

“Are you reading my mind?” Erik asked, blunt.

“Are you feeling my blood? What does it feel like?”

Erik frowned. “A handful of nails.”

Charles suppressed the obvious innuendo. “And you’re an open book. More accurately, a library. When’s the last time you’ve read a library?

“Do you always speak in questions?”

“There’s nothing more satisfying to a telepath than seeing a thought carried out, in speech or action. I favor directness, as you do.” He brushed an imaginary bit of lint off of Erik’s arm.

“The gun range,” Erik said, “lead the way.”

Charles, triumphant, almost crowed at Emma now speaking with Moira, the CIA liaison. They collected the guns and clips. The range was almost deserted.

Footsteps could be silent. His eyes could be the front, but a presence could not be disguised. Charles held his stance, fired, then felt Erik’s long body molded against him. Soon after, a knife prodded at his back.

“You’re a precious library,” Charles said, “a hidden treasure. Isn’t it enough you’ve made it so far? Your target within reach?”

“What gave me away?” He spoke softly, deadly quiet. Did Emma know? Is that why Erik knew how to shield?

“Your thoughts ran against the rhythm of each bullet,” Charles said. “You throw your books about. How untidy of you.”

“And yet you lured me down here-“

“You wanted to come.” Charles smirked, let the double meaning slip. “Leave no evidence. Finish me off? I presume the security cameras are down.”

“I wanted-“

“Release.” Charles gambled, leaned back. The knife pricked through clothing, then melted, a hard little disk between Charles back and Erik’s chest. “No one can see us.” He turned his head, tilted at the precise angle. The intimate slide of their bodies brought their mouths to a kiss.

A little dry, perhaps too tentative, but that could improve, in time, when Erik joined them.


	34. The Suitor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erik Lehnsherr and mating displays.
> 
> Prompted from trobador's [gifset](http://trobador.tumblr.com/post/54495328867/motleypatches-trobador-motleypatches)

Erik had suitors ever since he grew into his teeth, or so said his mother. His hair was a deep auburn, his eyes a wistful green, and long lashed, complicating the effect of a strong-boned face. At nineteen, slender and handsome with a smile that was still more shy than unnerving, Erik met Charles for the first time

 

Charles Xavier- what mutant doesn’t know about the prodigy who made his first speech for mutant rights at the UN at thirteen, testified before Congress at fifteen against mutant registration, graduated from Harvard at twenty after completing groundbreaking work on the X-gene, seemingly settling once and for all the debate that “mutants", for all their preternatural abilities, are integral parts of the society and the natural progression of humanity in a changing environment.

The meeting involved a bar, a bet, and some false IDs. It ended in someone calling the police, some desperate running and hiding against back-alley trashcans. Erik remembered an impromptu party at the apartment he shared with two other members of the Brotherhood, a bemused smile, and a lot of shouting wonderful righteous things. The next morning, he found a stained tailored (bespoke, corrected Emma) suit jacket on the kitchen chair. Erik paid to have it dry-cleaned and kept it. The owner, initials CFX, never came back to claim it.

Years later, after Erik grew the beard that drew a different crowd from his early admirers and learned to wield his smile as much of a weapon as his metallokinesis, whenever he saw Charles Xavier in the news and he would feel the flutter in his stomach and remember the suit jacket still hanging in a closet back in Genosha. Sometimes, he even recalled a kiss, the sensation of lips soft as bruised fruit and a tongue like fire, licking down his throat.

At Westchester, everything was different. By the complex alchemy of history and biology, Erik realized that he must submit to the formalized and elaborate mating displays of those who courted him without insulting them. His mother had raised him to be courteous. Nevertheless, he came to Westchester to write; Erik found the attention of the people unpleasant, the second-hand embarrassment galling, but his publisher, his editor, and even his agent insisted. A writer could write. An author needed to sell, and Westchester embraced the theoretical, the bizarre, the iconoclast, giving them opportunities.

Tuesday afternoon became Erik’s “at home" hours. Erik indulged in his prerogative as the one being courted: a few seemed disconcerted, bu no one seemed to have ever minded that he insisted on the displays taking place outdoors and that he himself would only sit there in jeans and leather jacket, still unshaven.

Erik spared them from laughter at least. He had been young once. He had been flattered, but the flatteries had all been fleeting. Even if it was different in Genosha, he knew a man or a woman who could afford one expensive gift to someone named “beloved" could always afford another, or even a third, addressed to a different face but bearing the same epithet.

And all this Westchester display was more of the same- an archaic tradition brought to life because it was fashionable, because it was fun, and likely because Westchester, was, in fact, quite a boring place. Its isolation from the city was why Erik had chosen the place He received the invitation to Greymalkin at the end of the second year of his residence. A concert cordially requested his presence.

"You must go," said Emma. “Charles Xavier’s back. I’m sure he would appreciate a signed copy of your book." “I’ll be sure to stuff it down the pants of my suit and hand it to him during the intermission." Emma huffed, but let him be. She was supposed to be his agent, do the socializing for him.

On Monday, Erik declined the invitation. Tuesday morning passed with a particularly unnecessary, in Erik’s private opinion, of the display of a woman named Raven. Erik had met her at the bookstore, where she looked as blonde as a Harlequin novel heroine. She had recognized him, flashed him a multicolored eye, and asked for his calling card. Red-haired, blue-skinned, and confidently naked under the noonday sun, Raven had been beautiful. Erk crossed his legs, considered acquiescing, before he realized she was proposing a violent revolution with him as the emperor of the new empire.

"I write fiction," he tried telling her. It took an hour. She left. The next three that appeared proved more alarming.

"Little Erik," Sebastian said. “I’ve missed you." Beside him, Azazel bared his teeth and Janos released a small tornado that destroyed all the tomato plants.

"What are you going to give me this time?" Erik drawled. Sometimes these displays involved feats of strength, as Raven’s had, but Sebastian had always had his own ideas about things.

"Are you expecting a little display? I hope I taught you to have higher standards than all this..pomp and circumstance."

"It’s a lot less damaging. If you’re not going start,"- Erik looked at his watch, feigning nonchalance, though he was trying to recall the spade from the toolshed— “then you’re trespassing."

"Come back with me. You are like me.." Shaw walked closer. Erik could feel the unnatural heat off of his skin from three steps away. “You can’t stop what we-"

"Am I interrupting?"

Charles Xavier, in a plaid jacket Erik had last seen a decade ago, stood before him, one hand at his temple. He was frowning. “I’ll leave if you want."

Erik couldn’t help the thrill down his spine. “No," he said, just as Sebastian said, “Yes." “Sebastian’s just going."

 "I will NOT-" Sebastian’s reaching his hand toward Erik’s neck when he froze. A moment later, Azazel took Jano’s arm and they disappeared in a puff of foul smoke.

"As you wish," said Charles, bowed his head slightly toward Erik.

Erik’s mouth became dry. Charles was better looking in his flesh than he had dared to imagine. “Your jacket’s still in Genosha," he said.

Charles smiled, licked his lips. Erik’s prose, some called operatic, others called opaque, had no description for the effect on him. His palms began to sweat. A frisson of want ran from head to groin. He regretted his jeans.

"I didn’t come for my jacket." Charles unzipped the overlarge one on his jacket, “but to return yours." He placed the jacket on a garden bench, but did not stop there. He untucked his shirt, unbuckled his belt. 

“What would you like me to do, Erik?" Erik had sixteen years of men and women pursuing him. He had gifts, he had seen dances, poems and songs, he had even seen troupes of performers and even half a circus, but no one had ever asked him what he liked to see. “Do you want me to continue?" Charles asked. The most powerful telepath in the world; he knew every thought in Erik’s head.

"Yes," Erik managed, the quiver of longing breathing through the syllable.

Charles continued, then he laid down on the ground, his blue eyes gazing at Erik through the flutter of his lashes. “Will you?" he asked, his hand over his naked chest, above the heart. A sheen of sweat gleamed on his taut stomach.

Erik swallowed. He knelt beside Charles. “Yes," he answered, and kissed him.


End file.
